LEAVES 



FROM A 



FINISHED PASTORATE 



LEAVES 



FROM A 



FINISHED PASTORATE 




Rev. A. L. STONE, D.D., 

LATE PASTOR OF THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH AT SAN FRANCISCO, 
AND FORMER PASTOR OF THE PARK ST. CHURCH, BOSTON. 



■«# - 



: 18 






NEW YORK: 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH & COMPANY, 

gOO BROADWAY, COR. 20th STREET. 

SAN FRANCISCO: 
SAMUEL CARSON, 120 SUTTER STREET. 



\ 









COPYRIGHT, 1882, BY 
A. L. STONE. 



i- i>\\ UUD <>. JENKINS, 

Printer <u:ti Stertotyptr^ 

20 North Willi, tin Si., New York. 



SALUTATION. 



To my Dear People of the First Congregational Church of San Fran- 
cisco, California, with whom I have lived and labored for fifteen years 
in happy fellowship, and from whom, in the service of the Gospel, I am 
separated now, through the interdict of occasional debility, I dedicate 
these " Leaves," whose voices they have heard in the course of this now 
finished Pastorate. 

And as sharing in such a memorial, I would turn back also to a re- 
moter Past, and a longer Pastorate, and include as well the households 
of Park Street Church, Boston, Mass. 



CONTENTS. 



I. 


Pressing Forward, .... 






9 


II. 


Casting Care on God, 






• 19 


III. 


Little Trials, 






3° 


IV. 


The Resurrection, . 






40 


V. 


Retributive Providence, 






5i 


VI. 


Christ's Humiliation, 






61 


VII. 


Prayer in Danger, . . 






68 


VIII. 


Human Accountability, . . . 






79 


IX. 


Loving and Knowing, 






90 


X. 


Christian Submission, 






102 


XI. 


Natural and Spiritual, . 






in 


XII. 


Religion and Natural Affections, 






122 


XIII. 


Administering Rebuke, 






133 


XIV. 


Strong in the Lord, 






144 


XV. 


GUILELESSNESS, 






154 


XVI. 


Mutual Duties, 






164 


XVII. 
XVIII. 


Returns for Mercies, . 
Compensation, . . . ' . 






173 
183 


XIX. 


Christ Giving Light, . 






193 


XX. 


Declining Day, 






202 



I. 

FOR THE NEW YEAR. 

PRESSING FORWARD. 

" . . . . This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behiud, and 
reaching forth unto those things which are before, 

"I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus." — Phil. iii. 13-14. 

THESE are fit words with which to inaugurate every new 
era of our natural life. If this be done, each epoch of 
the natural will become, also, an epoch of a more advanced 
spiritual life. Our earthly pilgrimage has its various reaches 
and stages, its inns by the wayside, places of pausing and 
resting, where we linger a moment, not to give over the 
journey, but to bind our sandals more firmly on, and gird 
our loins afresh. One of these transition points meets us 
here, on this first Sabbath and first day of the new-born year. 

It is not well to pass these mile-stones of our way, with- 
out taking time, at least, for a glance at their inscription. 
We need not make a full stop, as though the mile-stone were 
our journey's end, as though we had done enough for man's 
good and God's glory, and might sit down and repose on 
our laurels. 

This is not at all the spirit of our text. If we take on 
our lips these words of Paul that breathe such heroic ardor, 



10 PRESSING FOR WARD, 

such an untiring zeal, we shall not indulge in sell-complacent 
views of the past, and feel like putting off the harness of 
active service. Rather, because we have heard another 
chime of our finished years, — because the number of our 
years of toil on earth is diminished by one more unit taken 
away, should we be quickened to the resolve, " This one 
thing will we do ; forgetting those things which are behind, 
and reaching forth unto those things which are before, we 
will press toward the mark for the high calling of God in 
Christ Jesus." 

But, what is meant by "forgetting those things which are 
behind " ? Is the past of our life to be blotted out, and to 
be as though it had not been ? Are we violently to separate 
our future selves from our former selves, as by a bridgeless 
chasm? Are no tender, inspiring, thankful, disciplinary 
recollections to follow on from the years that are fled? Is 
the dimming eye of age to have no more any glimpse of 
childhood, — to lose sight forever of joyous, impassioned 
youth, to gather in its harvests without any abiding 
thought of the seed-sowing? Is all that God has done for 
us in mercies and chastenings, all vows we have uttered, 
all lessons we have learned, all sanctifying forces whose 
vitality is a stream issuing out of some fountain of by -gone 
days, — is all to be wiped out with an utter oblivion ? 

None of us have any such intelligence of our sins. 

We are not to forget the Divine Goodness in the past. 
Yery frequently are we to review all the way in which God 
has led us, for the sake of keeping fresh in our heart the 
memory of His great mercies. Hear David's continual 
chant, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His 
benefits ! " " We have thought of Thy loving-kindness, O 



PRESSING FOR WARD. \ { 

God, in the midst of Thy temple." We are not to write the 
record of providential blessings on the sands, whence the 
next advancing wave of Time shall blot it out forever. 
Rather are we to write it, as with the point of a diamond, 
on the tablet of grateful hearts. It is God's due that we 
remember all His kindness. No view of His providence is 
complete or correct without it, no estimate of His character, 
no measure of our deep indebtedness and heightened obli- 
gation. It were a great violence to the thankful spirit to 
deny it the privilege of returning often along the track of 
its mercies, to build its monuments to their Author, to weep 
tears of penitence over its own poor returns, and to tune to 
sweeter music its notes of Praise. Let them still shine upon 
us from the full round of the year, — all its sunny hours, its 
bright pages of rescues, healings, preventions, interpositions, 
every endowment for soul and body ministered by that 
Fatherly hand ! All these we may, we must, we shall re- 
member ! 

We are not to forget our Chastening s of the Past. This 
is a part of all Christian experience. " Whom the Lord 
loveth, He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom He 
receiveth." If the story of humanity itself could furnish any 
exceptions to this experience, the story of Grace can not. 
Many of the most precious lessons we have ever been taught 
personally were under this tutorship of Grief. Here we 
learned more than we knew before of God's paternal faith- 
fulness. Here we made deepest discoveries of the idolatries 
of our own heart. In this night of sorrow the glorious 
Heaven was seen in clearer vision, and longed for with in- 
tenser ardor. Some of the dearest bonds that unite us to 
the Hereafter are seen in this retrospect. The blessed mean- 



12 PRESSING FORWARD. 

ing of special Scriptures has been thus lettered to us in 
mourning type. Hours of tenderest intercourse with Jesus 
rolled beneath that shadow. God's hand touched us then 
an ore sensibly than ever, and the everlasting arms enfolded 
us. We can not afford to let all this go ; it is too precious ; 
it were a loss of richest treasures! No child of God is to 
forget his spiritual birth-hour, his introduction into the 
Family of the Redeemed. 

We are not to forget the time of our conversion to God. 
Often are we to look back to " the rock whence we were 
hewn, to the hole of the pit whence we were digged." 
Often are we to sing with full heart and tremulous lips : 

"Jesus sought me when a stranger, 
Wandering from the fold of God ; 
He, to save my soul from danger, 
Interposed, with precious blood." 

We are not to forget as individuals, or as a Church, the 
Times of Refreshing from the Spirit's presence, when, after 
long drought and weary waiting, the little cloud, " like a 
man's hand," has appeared on the far low horizon, and the 
breath of prayer, fanned by the wings of hope, has rolled up 
the cloud till it covered the heavens, and the great rain de- 
scended. Then every drooping plant Jifted its head. The 
parched places became pools of water. Seed long sown felt 
the reviving life, and shot up its tender germ. Blessed sea- 
sons in the Church ! We have known something of them. 
Here and there we have reaped and gathered in our sheaves 
in such harvest months. God has enlarged us from time to 
time, and in these months now gone, by bringing in converts 
unto righteousness. It were ingratitude for chief mercies, 
it were defrauding our souls of happiest inspirations not to 



PRESSING FOR WARD. 13 

remember, here and now, what must be, in its blessed issues, 
eternally memorable. 

And, the Teachings of GocTs Ordinances, we may not for- 
get — how many Sabbaths we have sat together in His pres- 
ence, and within His house, through all the round of the 
passing years ! Oh, how sweet to my own heart this bond 
of the Past ! How many Scriptures have thus become to 
us personal messages ! How many utterances of the Holy 
Ghost have thus unfolded their meaning to us in sacred 
hours, — how many have guided our thoughts and quickened 
our devotions in hours of social prayer ! These lessons 
ought to linger with us. They should connect themselves 
in our memories with a growing intelligence and deepening 
love of God's Truth, and still keep sounding on to us voices 
of Doctrine, Correction, and Reproof out of the by-gone 
days. 

There are other mutual experiences, through these years, 
we can not give over to forgetfulness. We have crossed the 
threshold of one another's homes, under every sky that has 
brooded our household life. By the side of sich-oeds, in the 
chamber of the dying, over the open grave, in the narrowed 
circles of bereavement, beneath the heavy hand of provi- 
dential calamity, — and, again, at the domestic festival, in 
social reunions, by the bridal altar, in the kindly interchange 
of daily greetings, we have met and mingled. Changes 
have chased each other across the stage with agile feet. 
Youthful hearts and hands have wedded ; babes have smiled 
into proud glad eyes ; childhood has shot into youth ; youth 
has taken on something of the sterner look of manhood's 
gravity ; manhood has worn on along its midday prime ; 
age has bowed itself lower toward its rest; and not a few 



14 PRESSING FORWARD. 

from all these ranks have " fallen asleep." It were not wise 
to forget that such things have been, that Life stands still 
with none of us, that we are on the stream floating along, 
now between flowery banks, now under the shade of cypress 
boughs. Especially can I never teach my heart to forget 
your manifold kindnesses to me and mine. Never have we 
had occasion to draw upon that kindness, either in individ- 
ual instances or in your collective capacity, and have found 
the draft dishonored. And never, while Memory remains, 
shall the mantle of Oblivion fall upon these accumulating 
Records. So the Past will live with us yet. We can not, 
if we would, dissociate it from our present and our future, 
and w T e would not if we could. 

Still, we can not abide in this Past. The end is not yet. 
Not one of Life's earnest calls is silent. The sun is still 
above the horizon. Each hand of Duty beckons us onward. 
The inspired voices speak with varied and quickening ac- 
cents, " Gird up your loins like men ! " " Run with patience 
your race ! " " Work while the day lasts ! " Yonder, not 
here, is the goal. Yonder hangs the crown. Myriad eyes 
of witnesses look on. We have traversed a part of the 
course, — but look before us, not behind. Ask not, how far 
we have run, but what remains to fill out the course. Bend 
to it again ! Press forward for the prize, full in view ! 

We must not sit down amid the blessings of the past, to 
tell them idly over as a miser counts his hoarded gold. Good- 
ness must quicken, not paralyze ; w r e must not linger over the 
story of our afflictions, and enervate our strength in weeping 
tears. But, gathering the new-born tenderness in our hearts, 
leave the sepulchre behind for duty to the living. We may 
not be content with past harvests of grace, but with fresh faith 



PRESSING FORWARD. 15 

in the Lord of the Seasons, sow in tearful hope. We have 
not learned enough of: the Truth of God. We have only 
picked up " a few pebbles on the shore "; out there rolls the 
great ocean. We have taken a jewel or two from the shaft, 
but the deep-branching ore veins the Finite and the Infinite. 

Let us, then, challenge and provoke one another to a fresh 
ardor in the course that remaineth ; our Life is yet to live ; 
our Race is yet to run ; our Work is yet to do. 

Let us press forward in the study of God's Word ! This 
one volume is not yet, with us, exhausted. The students of 
all ages have not mastered its lore of heavenly wisdom. 
We are associated to search this Book. The chief function 
of the ministry is a teaching function. We have lifted 
here this sacred tower that the true Light may shine forth 
from all its reflectors; that whatsoever life-voyager looks 
hither may, by friendly warning, and guiding ray, be able to 
lay his course for the haven. We may pledge ourselves 
anew, to-day, to the fearless, faithful, uncompromising ex- 
hibition and reception of what the Holy Ghost has taught 
concerning our lost estate, and the only way of recovery. 
The Truth, the truth as it is in Jesus, the humbling, self- 
denying truths of the Cross, we renew our covenant together 
to declare, by whatever lips, to welcome and to abide by. 

We have this truth to express in Christian Lives. That is 
its most eloquent utterance. It silences gainsayers. It does 
more. It conquers their convictions and wins their heart. 
This unanswerable vindication of our Gospel from all re- 
proachful imputations, to show that it is not a system of 
license, that it does not wink at wrong, that it does impart 
a new vitality to souls dead in trespasses and sins, that it 
renews and sanctifies, as well as expiates and pardons, we 



16 PRESSING FORWARD. 

must establish by Godly and holy living. This testimony is 
a new demand for every day. Once to have borne such 
witness is not enough. The evidence must shine clearer^ 
fairer, more irresistible, as we come more under the in- 
fluence of our Faith. Here, also, let us "press forward," 
discontented with past attainments, and reaching forth to 
a more effective witness-bearing. 

Let us, also, as God's Redeemed People, renew the con- 
secration of " our means" to the one cause of Christian 
Charity. We have given and given, given largely perhaps 
and constantly. We have sent no call away empty. The 
sum total of our annual benefactions is not a small figure. 
"Forget " that, my brother, my friend ! Let it go ! That is- 
one of the things that are behind. We are to press forward 
in this type of beneficent action. Still the sighing of "the 
Prisoner" comes to our ear, the wail of the Orphan, the cry 
of hunger of body and soul, the pleading of nations sitting 
in darkness. " Forward, onward, upward " in this good 
work ! 

And oh, for the prosperity of this Church let us engage 
anew ! God has written His name here. He has cast our 
lot within her walls. Let these walls be dear unto our 
hearts! Let her very "dust" be precious <to us! Here we 
dwell as a Christian Family. The whole fraternity of the 
Redeemed we are to love with a brotherly love. But in this 
local fellowship we are a single compacted household. We 
know one another, in the intimacy of domestic ties. We 
become acquainted with one another's peculiarities, with in- 
dividual traits, with the daily story, the temperament, the 
temptations, the trials, and all that enters, as warp and woof, 
into the texture of one another's life. This Home-Church 



PRESSING FOR WA RD. \ 7 

must be embalmed in our heart. Night and day must our 
prayers ascend for her, and our tears fall. For one another's 
spiritual growth and peace, under whatever leadership, we 
must count nothing too dear to bestow. That God would 
dwell in the midst of us, and Christ be our life and light, 
must be our hearts' ceaseless burden at the shrine of inter- 
cession. Pause not, to recount "past" labors, to remember 
" past " sacrifices, they are " the things behind." Look 
" forward ! " Renew the vow, — 

" If e'er to bless thy sons, 
My voice or hands deny, 
These hands let useful skill forsake! 
This voice in silence die ! " 

And, what are we doing to secure the conversion of those 
in our own families who have never given their hearts to 
Christ ? What effort do we put forth to bring our business 
confederates and our social acquaintances to the gate of 
Life? How often do we take our unconverted kindred 
and comrades by the hand, and express the tender wish 
that they were one with us in Jesus ? We have sacred and 
thankful memories of the power of God's Spirit, in those 
special visits when souls are gathered in like sheaves in 
harvest-time or " as clouds and doves to their windows." 

Are we wrestling with the faithful Promiser, for such an 
outpouring of quickening energy upon the word preached 
and to be preached, and all its confessors, and waiting, with 
anguished desire, for the great rain from Heaven ? 

Oh that we might press forward upon all this pathway of 
human rescue from the bondage of sin and condemnation ! 
Oh that we might share the mighty passion that brought the 



18 PRESSING FORWARD. 

Prince Emmanuel from the throne of Glorv to seek and save 
the lost ! and find, under these new moons of the opening 
year, abundant reaping for the garner of the Lord, and so 
find it, to every one of us, in sweetest earnest, a Happy, 
Happy New Year ! 



II. 1 

CASTING CAKE ON GOD. 

"Casting all your care upon Him ; for He careth for you." — 1 Pet. v. 7. 

HOW few faces wear, in the mirrors that reflect them, 
the stamp of a settled and abiding Peace ! The cur- 
rent and characteristic expression of the human countenance 
is that of anxiety and solicitude, worry and trouble. If 
there be in glowing eyes and parted lips the inspiration of 
Hope, it is Hope shadowed by Fear ; for the very eagerness 
of Hope trembles, lest, instead of the prize, we draw the 
blank of Disappointment. It is a pertinent as well as a ten- 
der call that comes to us, to-day, in this voice of our heavenly 
Monitor, and speaks to this habitual unrest of our hearts. 

We make to ourselves most of our burdens. Some of us 
are exceedingly fertile and ingenious in this matter. We 
are objects of admiration to our friends, for the manner in 
which we persuade ourselves we have the weightiest loads 
to carry. Start a man with such a train, and there is no end 
to the freight he will take on. One care, of course, begets 
another, and the progeny is soon a legion. Begin to ask 
questions about contingencies and consequences, challenge 
the future of any interest with a nervous " what if ? " or 
" what then ? " and the spirit is instantly at sea, " driven of 
the winds and tossed." 



20 CASTING CARE ON GOD. 

Now a feeling of Responsibility is good for us. It is- 
well for us to understand that there are natural laws grasp- 
ing the health and soundness of our material life, and our 
intellectual development ; and spiritual laws controlling our 
spiritual health and vigor ; and providential laws carrying 
the assurance of a definite providential outcome. But the 
sphere of our responsibility is that within which our personal 
duties are to be performed, and our personal force exerted. 
And obedience to natural and spiritual laws is the very 
course to relieve us from care, giving us the peaceful and 
glad conviction that, having been careful to be faithful and 
reverent to those Laws, we may lay aside all other care. 
The zone of our responsibility has its bounds. We are not 
responsible for the orbit of comets, the changes of the sea- 
sons, or the course of Supreme Sovereignty. And to trouble 
ourselves about the forces of Nature, or the methods of the 
Divine administration, is going beyond our sphere. And 
this is precisely the way in which many hearts bow them- 
selves down to the ground with burdens too heavv for their 
necks, and never intended for them to lift at with so much 
as one of their fingers. 

This is the weight that makes men stoop so soon toward 
the grave. This plows furrows deeper than the share of 
time. This strains the spirit till its elasticity is gone. This 
brings premature gray hairs, and cuts short the vigor and 
comfort of life. Care more than Duty, more than work, 
more than want, Care with Duty and labor and want, the 
bitterest ingredient of all, this it is which presses a soul quite 
beyond endurance. How foolish, how needless, how unbe- 
lieving ! And what a voice of music is that which calls to 
the child of God, nay, to each burdened one of earth, who is 



CASTING CARE ON GOD. 21 

freely welcomed to the same relief, " Cast all jour care upon 
Him, for lie careth for you ! " 

1. It will help us to do this if we consider that God has 
a plan, which includes all that can touch our personal ex- 
perience. Enter a shop of human artificers ; what a scene 
of confusion ! There is forging, and welding, and molding, 
and casting, and riveting, and all apparently disjointed and 
fragmentary. You can make nothing of it. No man, so 
far as you discern, brings anything to pass. He turns out 
no completed product. Is it fruitless industry, therefore? 
No. You feel no trouble about it. Y r ou have confidence 
that, however limited and local the art and the knowledge 
of the individual workmen, at least one Master Mind goes 
by a plan, understands the relation of each fragment, and 
the necessity of all the fragments to a consummate whole ; can 
put together these scattered and diverse bits into some ad- 
mirable piece of machinery that shall match and save the 
sinews of a hundred men, drive a floating armament of Na- 
tional power across leagues of Ocean breadth, or thunder 
over the expanse of a Continent, with scores of lives and 
millions of treasure in its train. The thought of this plan, 
the knowledge that it exists, is an instant relief in the survey 
of the shapeless medley. It is all needful, we say; every- 
thing has its place ; there will be no loss of material or labor ; 
the minutest link and rivet are numbered with the specifi- 
cations, and are not less essential to the symmetry and 
strength of the whole than the stateliest and most elaborate 
portion that shows worthy of some magnificent design. 

This, now, is the way to be assured and comforted con- 
cerning the materials and agencies with which Providence 
works. That Headship is not changeful in its schemes and 



22 CASTING CARE ON GOD. 

ends. It does not shift its purpose with each shift of cur- 
rents and tides. It does not take up new ideas and receive 
new inspirations with the fresh incidents of every day's 
story. It does not accommodate itself to unexpected exi- 
gencies. There are no unexpected events, no insubordinate 
forces, no surprises nor defeats. All that occurs belongs to 
the one wise and perfect plan by which the Infinite Designer 
works. That plan includes these varieties and opposites. It 
is an all-comprehending scheme. Each event has a place 
and a part in its unfolding. Each startling fact, flashing 
suddenly into the field of our human vision, like a flaming 
meteor, astonishing the night, had its precise orbit marked 
out before it trailed its pathway across the firmament. 
As observers of Providence, we are looking in upon 
God's great Laboratory. We see a few of His workmen ; 
fragmentary products of their toil lie scattered around ; 
draughtsmen, gilders, swart athletic Vuleans come and go ; 
there are heating and cooling, and softening and hardening, 
and confused and contradictory processes begun and broken 
off, and nowhere in sight is there any model to guide this 
busy, aimless swarm. But the Master Mind knows that 
something is being accomplished, and what that something 
is, and how each day's labor and each workman's stroke tell 
on the outcome of that grand mechanism, for which, under 
his control, they are all toiling together. 

Ah, if we had the faith to say, when we are surprised, 
when things go at variance with our wishes and expectations, 
when baffling and inscrutable forces move across the stage, 
looking not like champions for truth and righteousness and the 
better civilization of a golden future, but seeming to lead 
the age and the race straight back to a dark and dreary Past, 



CASTING CARE ON GOD. 03 

u This, too, is a part of the scheme ; all is provided for in the 
plan, and shall in some way serve its bright unfolding," how 
tranquilly should we look on; in what a perpetual calm, not 
of indifference, but of trust, should our spirits dwell. 

2. Again, God only has controlling Power, and upon Him, 
for this reason, we may well cast our care. How pertinently 
our Saviour reasons, in this vein, with His disciples : " Which 
of you, with taking thought, can add to his stature one cubit ? 
If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why 
take ye thought for the rest?" " Care" is in itself so im- 
potent in reference to the objects of our anxiety that it 
would seem as though any well-conditioned mind would at 
once pronounce it irrational. " What shall the morrow bring 
forth \ " Well, Care is not a prophet, and can not foretell, so 
it can not hasten or hinder the birth. If it could, to-day, 
read the morrow's scroll, it could not change the record ; what 
is written is written. "Do not yonder clouds portend a 
storm % " Well, what if they do ? We may close our win- 
dows, gather our flocks and herds within their folds and 
stalls, and our little ones beneath our roof, but we can not 
avert the storm. " How wayward and perverse are the 
hearts of men," we sharply comment ; " why can not they see 
as we see, and act reasonably and righteously \ " Well,we can 
not make the crooked straight ; we can not force men to look 
with our eyes and drive in our rut ; we can not help their act- 
ing weakly, wickedly, and perversely. " If we could only 
see ahead ! " Well, we can not. " If we could have the man- 
agement of affairs for a little while ! " Impossible. " If 
we could make one hair white or black ! " Not one. " If 
we could get hold of the helm and steer past yonder point ! " 



24: CASTING CARE ON GOD. 

But our feet are not admitted on the quarter-deck. Ah, my 
friends, is it worth while for ns to muse these vain and 
fruitless desires ? Shall we hug Care to our breast, as the 
young Spartan the stolen fox, only to gnaw our vitals? 
What a strong Hand holds the helm ! What a controlling 
Power presides over all movements and changes affecting 
the affairs of this life ! The Power concerning which the 
trembling and rescued Disciples exclaimed as they n eared 
the shore of storm-lashed Galilee, " What manner of 
man is this, for even the winds and the sea obey him ? " All 
•hearts are in His hands, and He turns them as the rivers of 
water are turned. What force oppresses us, what dear in- 
terest is imperilled, what loss threatens, what disaster im- 
pends % Powerless and helpless, how wise and prudent and 
comforting to carry the fateful question and submit it to 
Him unto whom all power in earth and heaven belongs ! 

3. Moreover, God has taken our care upon Him already. 
It is no burden to Him, and He knows it would crush us, 
and He has assumed it. He understands our shortsighted- 
ness and weakness and frailty. He knows well how liable 
to err in our management we should be, even with the best 
intentions, and for interests dearest of all to our hearts. 
These interests, all that can affect our happiness, peace, and 
welfare here and hereafter, enter into His great scheme of 
universal Providence — that scheme which is to subdue all 
evil, enthrone right for an undisputed eternity — and are 
there and thus provided for ; not apart, indeed, from our 
loyalty, our prayers, and our obedience, but in connection 
with them, and so made forever secure, lie has arranged 
and provided for all, as our Father and Friend, guarding 
our treasures against the time of our glad inheritance. 



CASTING CARE ON GOD 25 

This is a reason, surely, for leaving our care in His hands. 
He has taken it already. Why should we be eager to get 
the load back upon our own hearts % Every crisis of our 
personal history has been met by Him already in anticipa- 
tion of its coming on. For Abraham's extremity on Mount 
Moriah there was a ram caught by the horns in the thicket ; 
and since that time the name of Abraham's God is written 
"Jehovah Jireh" — the Lord will provide. 

Fugitive, friendless Jonah is cast into the sea, far from 
isle or shore. But God has prepared an ocean voyager to 
navigate the deeps with that solitary passenger and discharge 
him upon the dry land. " We have no meat," complained 
the wandering Israelites, and the quail sailed up over the 
camp, a dense, continuous cloud; u no bread," and the 
heavens rained down manna, and man did eat angels' food ; 
" no water," and the solid rock, touched by the rod of Faith,, 
gushed with living springs. The boat's crew, in the wild 
night on Gennesaret, is spent with rowing, and still the 
terror and fury of the gale increase, and then over the white- 
crested waves come the feet of Jesus walking on the water. 
We need not say, in our straits, " The Lord uill provide." 
Faith may take a bolder flight and repeat a more tranquil 
and assuring word : " The Lord hath provided ! " 

There is no " care " left for us. When we are shut up 
to a blank wall, high and solid, and then spurred by some 
imperative need, we shall not cry out querulously, " Can 
we fly ? " " Have we wings ?" " How may we surmount this 
inexorable barrier?" That, indeed, is our "extremity" 
and is equally God's " opportunity '." The wall will open 
with some rift of deliverance. An earthquake will level it 
with the ground sooner than God's rescue fail. In this 
2 



26 CASTING CARE ON GOD. 

-confidence we may rest. God has taken cake. Behind 
us are the pursuing, hostile chariots and horsemen ; on our 
flank the mountains ; before us the sea. " Here, then, we 
-die at last ! " Not so. We shall take up timbrel and harp 
on the far shore and chant forth our praise : " Sing ye to 
the Lord, He hath triumphed gloriously ; the horse and his 
rider hath He cast into the sea ! " 

One little word in our text is emphatic : "All," casting 
all your care. This is infinite and tenderest love, unstinted 
mercy ! Every hair is numbered ; every want foreseen ; 
each peril linked with some agency of deliverance ; each 
night of gloom lighted from above with some star of Hope. 

There come seeming Reverses to the cause of Truth and 
Right. Their hard-won triumphs are suddenly wrested from 
them. Will they not fail in the conflict ? We tremble for 
the Ark. It shakes almost to its overthrowing ! God is 
looking on. His hand can steady it. Uzzah need not be 
distracted, nor rush forward with irreverent hand to lay 
hold upon the symbols of the Divine Presence and Majesty. 
The Most High needs no human defender. 

The business of some strong " house " ceases to be profit- 
able. The tide of custom and trade ebbs away. Gains 
turn to losses. All is outgo, with no return making income. 
Capital, experience, enterprise, diligence in this wonted 
channel prove idle investments. Whence, now, shall be 
gathered supplies for the manifold personal and household 
demands? Want shall be master there and rule with 
tyrannous sceptre. What sad, questioning eyes look into 
the pallid face of this failing man of business ! Is there 
anything better that he can do than to take himself away 
from such pining glances, and from all harrowing conscious- 



CASTING CARE ON GOD. 27 

ness % Let him hide his drooping head under the turf, as 
many a man has done in such extremity ! But stop. Has 
he exhausted Divine resources ? Has God but one harvest- 
field that this man can till ? " Give us this day our daily 
bread." Yes, but the granary is empty. What granary ? 
Whose granary ? God's ? Does He measure His fullness 
and His beneficence by this one narrow channel, and if 
this be closed must Hope die and the dependent perish? 

The beloved and honored head of some full home is 
stricken down. All the needs of that little community 
were met by the hand of this one provider. His life was 
the fountain from which flowed all the copious streams of 
supply. So steady and satisfying were the streams that the 
sense of dependence was scarce expressed or even felt. 
The ministries of comfort were almost like the laws of 
nature — regular, constant, abundant. Suddenly the streams 
have failed and the fountain is dry. The clinging fingers, 
torn from their hold, upon whom or what shall they fasten ? 
The empty hands — who shall fill them ? Well, is there 
nothing written for Faith and Hope against such an hour of 
gloom % "A Father of the fatherless and a judge of the 
widows is God in His holy habitation." " Leave thy fa- 
therless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy 
widows trust in me." These desolate ones are not left 
unprovided or uncomforted. The very ties that seem to 
have withered offer still their sweet utterance to their lips — 
" Husband ! " " Father ! " — and, casting their care on Him, 
they can never again be widowed or orphaned. 

The success of some beneficent Reform seems imperilled. 
Appetite, selfishness, cruelty, and cunning have rallied in 
triumphing vigor. In some great debate, they have won 



28 CASTING CARE ON GOD. 

their point. Shall the friends of good morals faint and 
lose heart, for one reverse ? Shall they yield the day to 
error and wrong, — desert the helpless, and suffer unbridled 
rapacity to ravage as it will in all the fields of human life 
and hope ? Or, calling again upon their Infinite Ally, shall 
they renew the strife in His strength who can give them 
the victory ? 

There is no massive obstacle to the coming of better days, 
no great mountain in the way of Human Progress, before 
which some lowly Galilean fisherman shall not stand up in 
the name of the JSTazarene, and say : " Be thou removed, 
and be thou cast into the sea," and it shall obey Him. 

Oh, how lightly weighted we might go through the 
changes and revolutions of earthly times and seasons, bur- 
dened only with loving duty and casting care on God ! 
Light sits the yoke of Love, — and that is the only yoke 
with which God, in His Gospel, or in His Providence, or 
in His Law, lays upon our necks. 

" Love is the fulfilling of the Law." 

Pise up to this calmness of Faith every day ! Take hold, 
brethren, of the joy of this your heritage ! Let no look of 
habitual solicitude sit, at home, on your face, — no frequent, 
long-drawn sigh from your heart proclaim your distrust, 
and dishonor the God of the promises! Let me look at 
your faces. Be cheerful, tranquil, and hopeful under all 
the strain of circumstances. It is not for one of you, call- 
ing yourselves children of the Highest, to go about mourn- 
fully and in gloom, with your heads bowed down like bul- 
rushes, under whatever dark cloud hiding the blue of 
Heaven. Such an attitude and such an aspect question the 



CASTING CARE ON GOD. 29 

truth and faithfulness of the reigning, providing, covenant- 
keeping God. Trust Him and be at peace ! Those eyes 
are always open. They see your every need. The relief- 
trains will come in, in a good though unexpected time. 
" Wait on the Lord," — that is more than praying, — u Wait ! 
be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart ! 
Wait, I say, on the Lord ! " 



III. 

LITTLE TRIALS. 

"Take us the foxes — the little foxes, that" spoil the vines." — Solomon's 
Song ii. 15. 

THE most insidious and mischievous marauder against 
which the Jewish husbandman and vineyard -master had 
to contend, was the sly, subtle, devastating fox. He did not 
run in noisy troops, like the gregarious barking jackal, but 
slipped softly and silently out of his burrow, and glided with 
swift and noiseless footfall to his waiting repast. For the 
young vines and their tender fruit his relish was especially 
keen, and his most frequent incursions were, of course, in 
quest of this, his favorite esculent. It was not easy to 
fence him out or guard in any way against his ravages — he 
came so stealthily, he insinuated himself so easily through 
the smallest openings in the hedges, he sat so hidden under 
the leafy shelter of the plant he was stripping of its clus- 
ters. Some great Behemoth of the forests or the marshes 
had been a far less formidable enemy. 

So the most disastrous influences to undermine and de- 
stroy character are by no means those that approach with 
broadest and boldest front, sounding their defiance before 
them and bearing down upon us to crush us by main 
strength. 



LITTLE TRIALS. 31 

It is well that all of us be warned that the greatest peril 
to our purity and constancy, in whatsoever relation, may lie 
in our encounter with the little trials of life. 

When any stronghold of virtue within us — when any 
interests we esteem most precious and sacred, are menaced 
by some grand assault, our fears take the alarm at once ; we 
gird on our armor ; we summon all our prowess and reso- 
lutely join battle. The grosser onsets of temptation com- 
ing of set purpose to betray and ruin us seldom win vic- 
tories over us. To the forces that lay direct and open siege 
to us, our defences are for the most part impregnable. It 
is not the storming party that wins the fortress, but the 
sappers and miners. 

Let us see if there be not some discerning vision possible 
to us, by which the peril of those infinitesimal influences 
upon character shall be made palpable to our apprehen- 
sion. 

The fundamental element of danger from these influ- 
ences is our sense of security in their presence. We look 
down upon them as beneath our notice and regard. The 
idea of being worsted by them, actually overcome and smit- 
ten to the earth, we treat with disdain, as Goliath the shep- 
herd-boy that championed the host of Israel. They may 
ripple around our feet like waves that wash the base of 
some tall promontory, but above their lowly crests the rocky 
rampart frowns in secure and solid strength. If we yield 
to them, their whole force expends itself on trifles. If 
they govern us, it is only in the unimportant incidents of 
life, those trivial matters of conduct that are to the sum 
total of character as " the small dust of the balance." Our 
reservoirs of virtuous principle can afford this little drain. 



32 LITTLE TRIALS. 

Taking a step or two from the highway of honor and right, 
the departure is not worth magnifying — we have not lost 
sight of the true road, our direction and progress are in the 
main the same. This little irregularity, if it troubles any 
one, is easily mended, and all is still well. No sense of 
danger disturbs our fears. And yet the shepherd-boy of 
Bethlehem slew .the Philistine of G-ath ; the waves that 
beat at the base of rocky headlands wear away the support- 
ing pillars and down rush the proud heights into the whelm- 
ing sea ; the little drain that wastes drop by drop the capa- 
cious reservoir, widens to a rill, a torrent, a broad running 
breach through which pour the main floods. 

One may feel altogether superior to these minor failures, 
as one who has a great reputation for learning may think 
he can afford to be inaccurate in common things, or as a 
great artist may fancy he can support his fame if he over- 
look small imperfections. So that we meet the great trials 
of life in a becoming manner and approve our steadfastness 
therein, we may think it not very essential to rally our 
strength in these feebler crises, our standing being always 
safe, however these uneventful encounters turn. But that 
famous artist won his niche by perfection in trifles, and will 
lose it again if he reverse the process. That scientific rep- 
utation will go by the board if its lesser problems need 
rectifying; and there is no character so invincible to evil 
that the victories of foes despised will not weaken all its 
defences. 

Now, a man may not be a spendthrift, judged by any 
signal acts of extravagance ; he may not lavish thousands 
upon a painting or a piece of statuary ; he may be able to 
resist the temptation of jewels and silver plate, but he may 



LITTLE TRIALS. 33 

indulge so many petty fancies, he may part so freely with 
his small coin in trifling purchases, he may so thoughtlessly 
drain himself by driblets, as equally to outrun his income. 

Take, now, that phase of character which we call the dis- 
position. On great occasions, and in what appear to be the 
more important tests of its tempering, it may come through 
the ordeal with flying colors. Whenever any of its demon- 
strations attract the public eye or court a public verdict, 
it may hold the reins of the passions with a strong hand, 
keep down insurrection, and wear a face of such calmness 
and sweetness as it should seem nothing could ever ruffle. 
In social life it may express itself only and always in smiles 
and pleasant words. It may take for its costume such 
gracefulness of manner and cordialities of tone that every 
observer shall be charmed. And this may be its habitual 
exercise in this more noticeable sphere — kind, gentle, and 
winning. But suppose there is a more secluded sphere in 
which it watches itself with less care and vigilance ; suffers 
itself to be surprised into outbreaks of harshness ; glooms 
over its out-of-door sunshine with the sullen clouds of fre- 
quent ill-humor, under the domestic sky ! What if, in the 
little trials of these more private relations, the disappoint- 
ments and perplexities of household cares and intercourse, 
it express an irritable, quick-tongued peevishness, overcome 
by any and every small domestic vexation and cross ! What 
if, amid these unpublished scenes, any disturbance of accus- 
tomed arrangements, any postponement of habitual gratifi- 
cations, any coming short of exacting ordinances, any 
untoward accident restricting wonted conveniences, be 
allowed to act upon this temper like sparks of Are upon 
gunpowder — a flash and an explosion, and a lingering, low- 



34 LITTLE TRIALS. 

ering, sulphurous cloud ! Of what so great significance and 
worth are those public sweetnesses and amiabilities com- 
pared with this other portrait % Tell me what look a man 
wears when he enters his home and shuts the street door — 
when he addresses dependents and inferiors, and sits down 
at the family board ; tell me how a young man or a young 
woman speaks the sacred names of father and mother and 
meets delays or perversities in those who serve their needs 
and comforts, and I shall have the most reliable data for a 
judgment as to the real quality of their temper. Ah, these 
little trials do more stoutly prove the temper of us all than 
the greater and rarer where we appear to such advantage. 
And Christian character fails in consistency, symmetry, and 
self-possession scarce anywhere more signally and lament- 
ably and with more disastrous consequences than in these 
lowly and familiar walks. " Take us the foxes — the little 
foxes that spoil the vines." 

If we look upon the friendships of life, strongly and 
firmly cemented, seemingly and really, by equality of age 
and circumstances, sympathy of tastes and pursuits, expe- 
riences of mutual tenderness and helpfulness — histories that 
have gathered precious and lasting memorials of their 
unchanging truth and steadfastness — we shall find, com- 
monly, that the influences that rive them asunder are, in 
their sources and causes, very trivial and unimportant. The 
breach is not caused so often by any demand made from 
one heart upon another for some great self-sacrifice, some ar- 
duous and difficult^service, some costly bestowment. These 
drafts are likely to be honored to the extent of the just 
ability, and even beyond. It is not that one is sad and 
needs- so much more of the comforting presence of the 



LITTLE TRIALS. 35 

other, or that one is sick and would be watched over by 
loving eyes, or that one is perplexed and leans heavily for 
counsel and guidance. The tie is proof against all such 
strain. Nay, it grows stronger and dearer under such 
stress, and clings closer and more vitally to the souls it 
encircles and binds together. The cause of the rupture will 
be a foolish jest, an unmeaning but hasty word, a little, 
thoughtless slight, an idle pique, a piece of silly pride that 
could not say on the instant, "I am wrong — do excuse me," 
and so could not say it at all, the difficulty of a frank over- 
ture growing with every hour's delay ; and the fellowship of 
years is dissolved, not without later and long-lingering 
regrets. And so neighbor shall look coldly upon neighbor 
and pass as strangers, not because the one has inflicted upon 
the other some atrocious injury still persisted in, or refused 
some great act of kindness in its fit occasion, but because of 
a shrug of the shoulder, or a light remark forgotten as soon 
as uttered, or a small piece of criticism upon the face or the 
apparel, or some other indivisible nothing, tiniest molehill 
puffed and swelled into an Alp sheathed in glaciers and 
topped with perpetual snows. " Take us the foxes, the 
little foxes ! " Let every Christian disciple pray this daily 
prayer ! 

In matters, now, of Trade and Business, propose to some 
honorable firm, under the necessity of large profits to meet 
its rents and clerk-hire, and the charges of the household 
establishment, and exposed, as every candid man knows, 
to the inevitable temptation to take whatsoever advantage 
falls within its reach ; propose to these gentlemen to break 
open their neighbor's store and transfer his goods by stealth 
to their own warerooms, to forge his name on a blank check, 



36 LITTLE TRIALS. 

to abstract from his safe a certificate of so many shares of 
stock, and your mission there will be likely to come to a 
sudden and bitter end. If they could do all this and escape 
detection ; if, upon detection, there were no laws to bring 
them to Justice ; if it were a matter alone between their right 
hand and their conscience, they would shrink with most 
nervous recoil from the thought of it. This isn't the way in 
which temptation approaches them ; they are not tried by 
such ordeals. The special peril to the honesty of business 
men is this : that qualified methods of doing business, of se- 
curing bargains, of influencing markets, will come gradually, 
silently, and universally into vogue, governing with so abso- 
lute and ubiquitous a control the interchanges of all mer- 
cantile life, that any non-conformist must go out of business 
or out of the world ; which methods are not grossly dishon- 
orable, but when thoroughly sifted and strictly tested by the 
immutable principles of justice and truth, are found to be off 
the track, oblique to the straight and true course ; and that 
each trader, each artisan, each producer, will in his own walk 
yield, point by point, the little deviations about which he 
can not help the consciousness of some scruples, which 
he is almost afraid to look at in too clear a light, but 
which are so sanctioned and sustained by this common law, 
that how to draw out of the sweep of the current he can not 
see. Dare any man confidently affirm that a rigid applica- 
tion of the divine law, the precepts of Christ, to this sphere 
of life, would not necessitate a recasting of much of the 
standard code? Oh, will not Christian] men" beware how 
these slight departures, these trivial but gainful obligations 
get currency with them, and to plead before the world the 
sanctity of Christian indorsement ? " Take us the foxes, the 
little foxes that spoil the vines." 



LITTLE TRIALS. 37 

Take the case now of young men amid the temptations of 
life in a great city. The danger is not that they plunge at 
once into all the vices and excesses for which there are in 
the midst of us such abounding and perilous facilities. ]STo 
man jumps from the top of the ladder to the bottom at one 
leap. However seemingly sudden, transformations of char- 
acter in this direction are always gradual — with a secret if 
not an open history that exhibits the sliding scale of its prog- 
ress. The danger is that these imperilled ones yield to in- 
clination and solicitation by little and little; that they learn 
by degrees to look upon the bold, inflamed visage of vice 
without disgust and shuddering. Invite one of them to the 
gambling-house, to bathe his soul in the tides of the fierce 
excitement that ebb and flow in those silent chambers. You 
are quite too fast. He has both the conscience and the cour- 
age to say u JVo ! " But ask him to take a quiet game of 
cards in your room with a few pleasant companions, just to 
pass away the time, and a trifling stake just to enhance the 
interest, and he will see no harm in that. He will be kept 
in countenance by comrades above suspicion. No harm may 
come of it, and yet it may be that the first light grasp of the 
fatal passion shall be laid upon him in that such seemingly 
innocent interchange. He will, at all events, have learned, 
as carpenters say, " the use of tools." 

You will hardly draw him into one of those vile dens 
reeking with the mixed fumes of the intoxicating cup and 
resonant with voices of blasphemy and rioting; but ask him 
in some festive evening party to pledge you in a glass of 
wine, and he may venture upon that little courtesy and no 
harm may come of it, and yet the first dim fire of an unap- 
peasable thirst may thus kindle upon his vitals. 



38 LITTLE TRIALS.. 

And so it may be with the Sabbath sanctities, and so it 
may be with the fascinations of evil companionship, and so 
it may be with the entrance paths of dishonesty, and so with 
all the circle of the vices. His peril is that the initial steps 
leading down these steep and swift declivities may be lightly 
and thoughtlessly taken, and without misgiving, and so the 
bands gather force and tightness upon him that shall by and 
by drag him down the abyss. Oh, here, too — and many ago- 
nized voices out of the old homesteads join the prayer: 
"Take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines" 

So, also, in the more specific sphere of the Christian life 
itself : there is the same momentous interest hanging upon the 
issue of the little trials intercepting the way of advance. 
The first risings of sinful desire, unbidden, involuntary, un- 
welcome, who shall dare to trifle with them, or because we 
think they are never to be cherished, never grow into pas- 
sions and ripen to purposes and prompt to deeds, look leni- 
ently upon them ? The first spray of the cold waves of 
worldliness falling on the fervors of a pious heart, upon the 
ardor of young, fresh love — ah, if the Soul retreat not in- 
stantly from the chilling surge, the frost of a deadly winter 
sets in upon its spiritual life. A slight interruption in the 
regularity of our daily devotions — how many exigencies may 
seem to justify it ; but it is a first step away from God, and 
so from hope and peace and safety. Propose to a Christian 
any open denial of his Lord, a distinct renunciation of his 
service, and his answer flashes back upon you : " Get thee 
behind me, tempter! " But suggest that it is not necessary 
that he parade his religious notions in purely social gather- 
ings ; that he need not be more conscientious than other 
men in business and politics ; that it is not a part of the old 
Adam in him, but only a decent self-respect, to resent injury 



LITTLE TRIALS. 39 

and insult ; that Christianity must be made attractive to the 
world by softening down its high and unfaltering rules, and 
though that may seem to him here but a shade of declension 
from the loftiest ideal of his name, if he yield to you, he is 
already deep in treason to Christ and His kingdom. The 
danger is not that he fail in great trials, the hand of 
God is so visible there, his own weakness so conscious, his 
gracious discipline so obviously involved. To the stroke of 
bereavement he will bow without a murmur, chanting the 
soft melody, " The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken 
away, blessed be the name of the Lord." Over the loss of 
earthly riches he will sit down in submission, whispering to 
himself, " We brought nothing into the world, and it is cer- 
tain we can carry nothing out." Job was not crushed under 
the triple avalanche of calamities rolled down upon him by 
his persecutor — the fire of heaven, the Chaldean robbers, the 
great wind of the wilderness, the sweeping off of his flocks 
and herds, the ravaging of his estates, or the death of sons 
and daughters. In all this the Patriarch "sinned not, nor 
charged God foolishly." But the boils were too much for 
him. And so the Christian's peril now is, that, in the small 
but varying cares of his daily experiences, in the trifling 
crosses of domestic and social life, which break no bones and 
shed no blood, but only goad the spirit, he speak unadvis- 
edly with his tongue, lose his self-control, suffer the rule of 
impatience to get the upper-hand, and so bring the re- 
proaches of many lips upon the religion he represents. Oh, 
brethren and friends, need is there of incessant vigilance in 
all these lowly levels of our earthly way, and this prayer 
for continual intercession, which I would leave in your 
hearts and on your lips : " Take us the foxes, the little foxes 
that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes." 



IV. 

EASTER SERMON. 

THE RESUKKECTIOK 

- . . . . The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall 
hear His voice, and shall come forth. . . . " — John v., part 28 and 29. 

DEEP is the sleep of those that rest in the Grave. ISTone 
of Earth's voices can produce an awakening. Tenderly 
the voice of sorrowing affection may call over the beloved 
dust, summoning it back to take the vacant place by hearth 
and board and altar ; adjuring it by names that used to thrill 
through all the fibres of its being ; but it stirs not in its nar- 
row cell ; all is motionless and still. Urgently the voice of 
Repentance may address it, shedding bitter tears upon the 
turf that covers the victim of many wrongs ; vainly implor- 
ing pardon from the unconscious day, which, living, it caused 
to quiver with anguish ; beseeching it to return but for one 
moment to hear that penitent prayer, and speak one word 
of forgiveness ; and the marble lips keep their unbroken 
silence. The voice of Panegyric may rehearse high praises, 
with tones which once had been sweetest music to that ear; 
and now its deep insensibility is undisturbed. And loudly 
the world's voices may peal along, — the shout of ambition, 
or hate, or stern resolve, the song of the reveler, the wail of 
grief, — and no accent pierce that unbreathing slumber. And 
fiercely the clarion of war may wind its blast, the roll of the 



THE RESURRECTION. 41 

drum, the trampling of hoofs, and the booming of cannon 
may sweep by, — all these are unavailing to break that dream- 
less sleep. Over the dust of buried generations years and 
ages have winged their flight, the shocks of contending king- 
doms and falling empires have resounded, and still the bolts 
of the charnel-house are unwithdrawn; still that dust is 
locked in its long repose. 

Well might the Saviour hold up the announcement in the 
text as the chief marvel of a wonder-working Omnipotence. 
" The hour is coming in which " a sovereign voice shall wake 
a hearing beneath the sod, the ashes of the sepulchre shall 
move and flow together, and the earth-mingled Dust shall 
stand up, arrayed again in living humanity. Fittingly, on 
this Easter morning, does this theme invite our thoughts. 
Not only does the soul live, but it shall come back to reclaim 
its material investment, which shall present again to human 
vision its remembered identity of old. Man's reappearance 
for Judgment shall be from the opening Grave. At that 
great Scene two multitudinous arrays shall approach each 
other : the Judge and His retinue of angels coming through 
the parted Firmament, in the clouds of Heaven, and the 
Throng to be judged coming up through the parted sod, out 
of the tomb. For this, our mortal race, there is to be a 
General Resurrection. 

We may note, in the first place, that this is not a doc- 
trine discovered by Reason. But for a whisper from the 
Deity man could have had no guess that " this corruptible " 
should ever "put on incorruption." It passes from our 
sight into darkness and dissolution. It is blended and lost 
with the common dust. It rises in aerial vapors. It comes 
up in Earth's verdure and harvests. It passes into the far 
3 



42 - THE RESURRECTION. 

rounds of " the elements." It mingles with other animate 
-existences, which in their turn decay and are reproduced in 
new and ever-varying combinations. How could we con- 
jecture that from this scattered and appropriated materiality 
the being that laid it aside should be again constructed, and 
live and move, to all beholders, the undoubted Original? 
The heathen sages arrived at no conception of such a destiny 
for the body. With some faint echo of a foregone revela- 
tion, in Patriarchal times, lingering on their ear, they might 
catch at the idea of the souVs surviving the shattering of 
this, its tenement. The voice of this deathless spirit was 
eloquent within them, pleading for an assurance that It 
should sometime be emancipated from its thraldom of clay, 
and rise to a freer and nobler life. But there was no such 
aspiration of the flesh, or for the flesh ; there was no pro- 
phetic reaching of the Material forward to a more refined 
organization, and incorruptibility. They inurned its ashes as 
a relic, not as a pledge. Easily, and by the sight of the eye, 
might they arrive at the knowledge of the primal sentence, 
" Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return ! '' but 
never could Keason, if God had not spoken it, have published 
the announcement, " All that are in the graves shall hear 
His voice and shall come forth." 

But, secondly, having heard this utterance, whether as yet it 
be proved or not, Reason gives it her clearest sanction. The 
soul has had a most peculiar and intimate connection with 
this body. It has been its home for years. In it it has 
passed through all the scenes of its probation. In it and 
by it it has sinned. In it and by it it has suffered and re- 
joiced and received life's varied discipline and wrought out 
its drama. The influences of this connection have been the 



THE RESURRECTION. 4.3 

governing influences in forming character. The soul passes 
forward with its character to meet the law of retribution. 
It is fitting that it should take its award in the body of its 
trial state, which colored so controllingly the issues of the 
trial. Reason pronounces the decision just which reserves 
the body, refitted for such a destiny, to an eternal fellow- 
ship with the soul in its bliss or woe. 

Thirdly. Having intimation of this fact, we can find most 
suggestive analogies for it in the walks of Nature. Go 
forth under our Northern sky in the leafless December ; 
behold the forests stripped of their foliage ; look abroad 
over the brown, bare fields. Where is the lively green of 
the spring's starting blade ? Where the waving harvests of 
the summer ? Where the yellow corn and blushing vintage 
of autumn ? A universal death has passed upon the vege- 
table creation. The mournful gale, sighing a requiem, 
strews withered leaves over the corse of Nature, or the 
driving clouds weave for her a winding-sheet of snow. All 
her pulses are still ; her vital currents are stiffened with the 
unrelenting frosts. She gives not one sign of life. Who 
that had never seen the winter pass away could be made to 
believe that Nature should, in a little, arise from her tomb 
in the freshness of a rejuvenescence, put on a new and living 
beauty, and walk the glad earth with her song of birds and 
melody of streams ? And having seen this, looking upon 
this annual miracle of Nature's resurrection, we are the 
better prepared to admit the marvel of man's. There is a 
still closer analogy to our doctrine with a certain class of 
insects — a transformation which would almost seem to have 
been prepared on purpose for a type of Immortality. At 
first we look only upon a feeble and loathsome worm. 



44 THE RESURRECTION. 

Proscribed and repelling, it moves slowly about for a time 
in the humblest state of being. Its short, dull span of life 
at an end, it lays itself down to die. For its poor remains 
it weaves, as its last act, a decent tomb. In this narrow cell 
it shuts itself up, dead and buried. "Within this sepulchre, 
all silent and unseen, a wondrous change is wrought. From 
the dissolving frame a new, agile, and brilliant form is 
evolved. With a struggling fullness of life it bursts its in- 
closure and leaps forth on many-colored wings, a thing of 
airy beauty. Upborne in its new element of being, it creeps 
no longer in the dust, dishonored and defiled, but disports 
itself in the fields of the atmosphere, feeds on the sweets of 
flowers and revels in the possession of new and glorious 
powers. Here is a Resurrection almost literal, and, for its 
sphere, no less wonderful or antecedently incredible than 
that which transforms corruption to incorruption. The one 
we behold with our eyes, and it may help our faith in the 
promise of the other. 

Fourthly. But turning from these dim prefigurings, let 
us hear now the testimony of Him who brought life and 
immortality to light. " The hour is coming " (it is our text ; 
how clear, how unequivocal its declaration), " the hour is 
coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear 
His voice and shall come forth." Four times in the com- 
pass of the next chapter does the same voice add assurance 
that all the Father had given Him He would raise up at 
the last day. " I am the Resurrection and the Life," said 
Jesus to the weeping sister of Lazarus four days after her 
brother's death. And herein is not only the assertion of 
the doctrine, but the revelation of the arm by whose prow- 
ess the grand victory over Death and Corruption was 



THE RESURRECTION. 45 

achieved. " Since by man came Death," writes an Apostle, 
" by man came also the resurrection of the dead." As the 
first man, Adam, standing at the head of the race, intrusted 
as its representative with its destinies, brought by his sin 
the sentence of mortality upon all who should spring from 
his loins, so the Second Adam, taking our nature upon Him, 
and acting also as the representative of humanity, wrought 
for the body a final deliverance from the captivity of the 
Grave. Nor is this connecting the Resurrection with the 
work of Redemption inconsistent with the fact that both 
the righteous and the wicked shall rise. It was the human 
nature that had come into condemnation and under bondage 
to the worm. The Son of God took upon Him this ruined 
nature, and whatever He wrought in His work of suffering 
and of sacrifice He wrought of necessity for this whole 
nature. In His work there is no narrowness. Bear- 
ing thus our nature, He descended with it into the realms 
of the Destroyer. He confronted the King in his own dark 
domain. He carried into the very court and citadel of 
Death a humanity which He was to bring away again by 
His own overcoming might. Oh, what a conflict was 
there ! No noise of the strife broke the solemn stillness of 
the lonely chamber ; but the result could not be doubtful. 
The tomb heaved and rocked to the swelling of an energy 
it could not restrain. Its bars and bolts were shivered like 
frostwork to the stroke of iron. Its marble walls were 
rent asunder, and forth strode the Conqueror, bringing with 
Him in triumph the rescued humanity ; and standing over 
the rifled grave He gave His witness visible and vocal : " I 
am the Resurrection." It was our nature that then rose in 
Him. A far-reaching vitality has gone forth like the first 



46 THE RESURRECTION. 

awaking life of Spring through all the bosom of the earth, 
quickening the ashes of dissolution ; from moidering dust 
educing living germs that shall one day, after long inaction, 
the winter past, spring into countless harvests, the vast con- 
gregation of the dead swarming forth to the day of the 
Lord. So it is that Christ is the " first fruits of them that 
slept "; and how triumphantly an Apostle adds : " If Christ 
be preached that He rose from the dead, how say some 
among you that there is no resurrection of the dead ? " 
Thus we have the fact of a resurrection, not discovered or 
discoverable, indeed, by Reason, but cordially approved by 
her when attested, shadowed forth by her analogies, and 
assured to us by the wondrous victory of the Man of Naza- 
reth. 

But the questions asked in the days of Paul are still on 
doubting lips. " Some man will say, how are the dead 
raised up, and with what body do they come ? " 

If it be the identical body of the former life, which of 
those bodies shall it be, — for every seven years, the con- 
stituent particles of the body undergo a renewing, so that 
one who has reached his " three score and ten," has had, in 
substance, ten different bodies. Which of these is the type 
of the resurrection body ? The departed have left us in all 
stages of being — gray with age, in manhood's prime, in 
infancy's budding morn, and youth's bright summer. Will 
the new, changeless body be the counterpart of that borne 
to the sepulchre? Will the old man rise, an old man ; and 
the babe, a babe % By what standard of years shall that 
resurrection body be framed ? 

How shall the lost dust of Humanity be found and 
gathered on the morning of rising? It has gone up in the 



THE RESURRECTION. 47 

martyr fires ; it has sunk to the ocean-floor ; it has been 
scattered to the fonr winds of heaven ; it has risen and 
waved in the trees of the forest ; it has roamed with the 
beasts of the field ; it has soared with the birds of the air. 
Shall it be called back, in its own identity, from all these 
comminglings ? A Poet has sketched for us a vision ; shall 
this vision become fact ? 

"Now monuments prove faithful to their trust, 
And render back their long committed dust : 
Now charnels rattle ; scattered limbs, and all 
The various bones, obsequious to the call, 
Self-moved, advance ; the neck perhaps to meet 
The distant head ; the distant head the feet. 
Dreadful to view ! See, thro' the dusky sky, 
Fragments of bodies in confusion fly : 
To distant regions journeying, there to claim 
Deserted members, and complete the frame." 

Are we to take this as a Poet's dream, or the sober view of 
Reason ? 

And how is the restitution of the body to its original 
possessor possible? It has become the property of other 
Lives, and been portioned out among many heirs. The sav- 
age cannibal has made the flesh of his victim his own ; 
which shall wear it, w r hen both shall rise together ? The 
harvests, that waved with such unwonted luxuriance over 
Waterloo, were green, by more than the husbandman's art ; 
they were nurtured by the dead humanity of that bloody 
field. Whose shall be the particles thus put again into cor- 
poreal structure ; shall the Belgic farmer call them his, or 
the slain soldiers of the mighty havoc? 

" How are the dead raised, and with what body do they 
come ? " Can we do better than give again the Apostle's 



48 THE RESURRECTION. 

reply ? " Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quick- 
ened, except it die. And that which thou sowest, thou 
sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may 
chance of wheat or of some other grain ; but God giveth 
it a body, as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed His 
own body." This Scripture settles it, that the new body 
is not to be composed of the particles that reared the old. 
From earth, and air, and sea, we need not call back these 
wandering atoms, and disentangle them from their myriad 
alliances. That which is sown is not that body that shall 
be. What more do we want of such a body as has been 
our tenement on earth ? Is the soul to be so imprisoned 
forever? "This I say," continues our inspired instructor, 
" that flesh and blood can not inherit the kingdom of God." 
And yet the New must be in some sense derived from the 
Old, else, there is no " Resurrection." What is this resur- 
rection body? It is called a " spiritual body" a contradic- 
tion in terms. But language is poor, on such mysteries. 
A spiritual body, of so subtle a materiality, so refined, so 
aerial, that, while it is a body, it is well-nigh a spirit too. 
What new form of matter is this? Have we ever seen its 
like ? Out of the old, cast-off relics, this incorruptible body 
shall somehow be eliminated, as the butterfly from the 
worm. 

What is this Animal Life of ours, this sentient being 
which we possess apart from the Life of the soul, this vital- 
ity that beats here [pulse] and here [heart] and dances 
through all the veins ? 

It is not of the flesh, nor of the bones, for flesh and bone 
are yet perfect when this life has ceased its demonstration I 
Not of the soul, for brutes possess it ! but it pervades us. 



THE RESURRECTION. 49 

Who shall say this is not the germ of the new finer struct- 
ure, called a " spiritual body " ? Does not the figure of the 
Apostle shape such a conjecture ? What is it that starts up 
in the new forms of vegetable life \ Not the old sown as 
seed, but the principle of vegetable vitality that had a sweet 
and mysterious being in the seed, itself intangible, its 
essence, its nature unknown, set free from the old sub- 
stance in which it dwelt, by corruption, and reappearing 
in new forms, but the same vegetable life it was. So, the 
Physical Life^ which almost like a second soul inhabits 
our physical frame, may be the contribution of the old de- 
caying body to the new. For aught we know, it may have 
a delicate and intangible materiality of its own. There 
may be, in this complicate Trinity of human life, a being 
within a being, to come forth, in the body's dissolution, and 
form a new vesture for the soul, its spiritual incarnation. 

It may cleave so tenaciously to this dust in all its trans- 
formations, that no violence can sever the connection. It 
may be so subtle as to elude the stroke of the steel, the 
search of the fire, the conquest of corruption. It may 
dwell, like a vegetable germ, hidden beneath the brown, bare 
soil, in the coldness and barrenness of the sepulchre, till the 
Almighty mandate shall call, with trumpet blast, "arise!" 
Upon this risen body the identity of former times shall be 
impressed. And this identity, you will observe, is inde- 
pendent of the years and changes of a human life. We 
know, in age, the likeness of the boy we first looked upon. 
The outward marks of identity are undisturbed through all 
the wasting and reproduction of life's periods ; and the 
ehief element in identity may be the presence of this same 
subtle essence of animal life, which I have supposed the 
germ of the Resurrection-body. 



50 THE RESURRECTION. 

Ah, my friends, to what a scene does this Doctrine point 
us forward ! No human hand can paint it. Then shall the 
Son of Man be revealed from heaven, and the voice of 
Power, the voice that called by the tomb of Lazarus, " comb 
forth ! " shall speak once more. Death shall hear through 
all his dark domain, and unbar his cells. Forth, from the 
green church-yards, the sleepers shall come innumerable ; 
up from the caverns of the sea, the uncounted victims of 
the battle and the storm; up from the sands of the desert 
in giant columns, where the caravans trailed their march ; 
from mountain passes and perilous denies ; from the plains,, 
where nation thundered against nation in all-devouring 
war; blackening with dense multitudes the long untrodden 
shores of extinct kingdoms, filling the solitary wilderness 
with a swarming life; marching on, all marching on toward 
"the throne of fire and of cloud." 

In that mighty rising, we too shall wake and stand up. 
Our dust may lie afar from the graves of our Fathers. The 
heats of tropic climes may slay us ; we may breathe our last 
upon the ocean wave, as strangers in a strange land our life 
may go out ; but we shall be found, the call shall break our 
slumbers, and we shall come forth incorruptible. Sire and 
son, husband and wife, brothers and sisters, companions and 
friends, the old laid reverently by, they who fell in their 
strength, and the infant of untimely end, all shall stand 
together, arrayed in Immortality, and waiting the opening 
of the Judgment-Books. 

Oh, in the hush of this calm Sabbath day, before this 
altar of Mercy, yet above the green sod, that shall be 
greener still over our graves, let this question search our 
souls, like the glance of Omniscience, " To what shall I 
awake in that Resurrection Morning?" 



V. 
RETRIBUTIVE PROVIDENCE. 

44 With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." — Mat. 
Yii., part 2. 

THE Scriptures fully reveal the doctrine of a super- 
intending Providence. They assert a sovereign personal 
pleasure ruling in every province of the Universe. " He 
doeth according to his will in the army of Heaven and 
among the inhabitants of the earth." They declare that 
this Supreme Mind is concerned with the minutest events 
that transpire. Not a sparrow falls without our Heavenly 
Father, and the very hairs of our heads are all numbered. 
God's hand controls the elements, guides the car of Revolu- 
tion, holds the reins of State, feeds the improvident ravens. 
This doctrine has in it a mighty practical force. There is a 
Providence in this world. It walks and works in the midst 
of us. God is in human history. His purposes go forth on 
all the tracks of creative agency. There is, indeed, no visi- 
ble throne, there are no manifest symbols of royalty. His foot- 
steps are in the sea ; darkness is His pavilion. There is 
nothing but the result, unveiling itself from the secrets of 
His councils, that tells us God is working. When and where 
He will interpose, by what instrument, and for what ends, 
subordinate and ultimate, it is not given us to know. This 
secrecy baffles resistance, strengthens Faith, and leaves on 
men a deeper awe before the Power that, unseen and untrace- 
able, manages all human affairs. 



52 RETRIBUTIVE PROVIDENCE. 

But the Scriptures, that teach us this general doctrine, 
take us farther on in the science of Providence, keeping 
these secrets, but disclosing other matters of vast interest and 
moment. They announce the Laws by which Providence is 
administered, giving us to understand upon what principles 
its visitations are sent, and warning us for what it will visit 
with rebuke. " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap." Here is one of these revealed laws of Providence, 
pointing us forward to the inevitable consequences of each 
action of our lives, bidding us remember that each period of 
life is a time of seed-sowing for coining harvests, instruct- 
ing us how youth may provide wisely for age, and inti- 
mating that our whole probation is scattering seeds for eter- 
nal reaping. " Be sure your sin will find you out." Here 
is another law, taking away from the heart that meditates a 
wrong all hope of impunity in committing it, declaring that 
all guilt, however veiled from the light of day and the sight 
of men, shall come out and attach itself to its perpetrator 
and hold him responsible. " The companion of fools shall 
be destroyed" — a third Law, holding us back from compan- 
ionship with the wicked and unprincipled, testifying that 
such association will bring upon both a common fate — a 
grave warning to that facile disposition that allies itself in 
daily intercourse with those who make light of the word of 
God and the sanctities of religion. 

And here comes our Text also, announcing another stern 
and inflexible law by which Providence is administered : 
" With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you 
again." This, too, as the connection intimates, is of the 
nature of a warning, rather than a promise. It holds the 
wrong-doer in the grasp of coming retribution. It declares 



RETRIBUTIVE PROVIDENCE. 53 

with an absoluteness totally unqualified that the injury he 
does another shall return in kind upon his own head ; that 
each pang he causes another to suffer shall in due time make 
his own nerves quiver. It is a sort of counterpart to the 
golden rule, teaching that whatsoever things we do unto 
others to harm and afflict, it shall be done even so unto us. 
It refers in the first instance to uncharitable judgment, de- 
claring that the bitter, censorious spirit in which one reviews 
the conduct of his fellows and speculates upon their motives 
shall be paid in its own coin. He shall have harsh judg- 
ment in return, his motives shall be maligned, and his char- 
acter be soiled by the handling of detraction. Then it refers 
also to acts of inhumanity and injustice. He who commits 
them shall suffer them — God shall do so to him. He shall 
feel the weight and sharpness of the stroke he has inflicted, 
By the measure he has meted it shall be measured to him 
again. 

The doctrine we do not undertake to prove. Here it is 
on the unerring page, and all history, public and private, 
sacred and profane, stands for confirmation. 

Let us, in the first place, briefly indicate the Law, and then 
speak of its applications and practical working. 

And, first, the Law is just. It is a statute of Him to 
whom the hosts of Heaven sing, u Just and true are thy 
ways, thou King of Saints." But, more than this, the judg- 
ment of every man is convinced ; the heart of every man 
feels that it is just. The punishment is proportioned to the 
offense. The criminal is treated no worse than he has treated 
others. It is eye for eye and tooth for tooth. It is an exact 
recompense, and he can not complain. It may be that he 
deserves far more than the identical infliction he made another 



54 RETRIBUTIVE PROVIDENCE. 

suffer ; for it is the value of the law broken, and not altogether 
the act that breaks it, that gives character or guilt. A small 
breach of it may argue as utter disregard to the interests it 
protects and the authority of the Lawgiver as a wide one. 
And the matter of complete spiritual retribution, entering 
into all the intents and thoughts of the heart, is reserved for 
another state. But this providential requital of bringing 
back upon the head of the originator the very evil he 
laid upon another is, as far as it goes, even-handed justice. 
The measure of the penalty is just the measure of the crimi- 
nal act. Were the penalty, though in reality not too severe, 
something else — something totally different in nature from 
the crime — the convict might institute a comparison and in 
his self -flattery fancy he was hardly dealt with. But this 
award of pang for pang, loss for loss, hurt for hurt, shuts 
his mouth ; he can not impeach it, he is dumb before the 
balanced scales of Justice that have weighed him out retri- 
bution by the counterpoise of his own deed. 

Secondly. It is a fitting punishment for the wrong. 
Some other punishment might be equally just, but what 
could be so appropriate % With its whole effect, it speaks of 
the divine displeasure against that one transgression. It is 
manifestly the fruit of that act. The intention of it can not 
be mistaken. It comes not by chance. It is not a general 
calamity in which each must bear his part. It is aimed di- 
rectly and meaningly at the thing done, which it reproduces 
for suffering. Multitudes of providences are blindly re- 
ceived. The mind will not understand the lesson they were 
designed to impress. As ministers of mercy and rebuke, 
their voice is unheeded because it is not perceived to what 
instances of ill-doing they speak. But here the recompense 



RETRIBUTIVE PROVIDENCE. 55 

contains the indictment for which it visits. The accusation 
which has so awakened Heaven's wrath appears on the face 
of the manifested wrath. The tribunal of the human con- 
science pronounces the requital not only just, but most fitting 
and appropriate. If one has put out his neighbor's eye, or if 
he has injured him in any way implied by that figure, putting 
out his light, his hope, his joy, removing from him some 
right or possession as essential to his peace as the eye to 
vision, and a Providence strikes him which puts out an eye 
for him or maims him of the same right and good he has 
wantonly violated, all lookers-on must see the eminent pro- 
priety of such a chastisement. It " serves him right," they 
will say. Nothing strikes home so nearly. It was well 
thought of by Providence. It is just the punishment they 
would wish to see inflicted. It is so exactly adapted to the 
offense. Such providences commend themselves to all in- 
telligence and all moral sense as the sort of retribution meet 
for the provocation. 

Again, the Law is wise and good because it is calculated 
to produce conviction and repentance. The heart of the 
injurer may be insensible to his criminality so long as he is 
exempt from suffering ; and if he be made to taste some 
suffering very different from that he has inflicted upon 
another, he may still fail to perceive the true nature of his 
conduct. But let him who has thrust out his neighbor's 
eye lose his own as a penalty ; let him feel how exquisite 
the pain when those sensitive nerves are invaded; let him 
experience the sadness of such bereavement and know what 
it is to roll a disfigured and sightless orb, and his heart says 
to him : " This is what I have done ; such was my neigh- 
bor's smart. The agony and sorrow I bear are what I im- 



56 RETRIBUTIVE PROVIDENCE. 

posed. Ah, I feel how cruel it was." So let the slanderer 
who has wantoned with a good name, defaming by innuen- 
does and surmises, imputing unworthy motives, or charging 
with base intentions — let him find his own good name the 
plaything of idle calumnies, his own motives and aims im- 
pugned and misinterpreted, be looked upon with the cold, 
averted glances of suspicion and distrust, or passed by with 
undisguised contempt, and as his blood boils and his cheek 
crimsons and his heart aches he will be likely to feel the 
wickedness of his own backbiting, and learn how dear and 
sacred character is. Such punishment will, if any can, 
bring the offender to contrition and reformation. 

This Law carries with it, then, a very effective and pre- 
ventive warning. Once recognized, it will deter men from 
injuring others. When one understands that every hurtful 
act he puts forth may return in Providence upon his own 
head, he will be careful what sort of Providences he thus 
invokes. This assurance will arrest his uplifted hand, sup- 
press the half-uttered calumny, soften the flint of his inhu- 
manity, and plead as loudly as self-regard can plead for 
justice, mercy, and brotherly love. He will ask himself, 
before laying an unjust burden on another, "How will this 
feel when I bear it myself? " While preparing an anguish 
for another heart he will not be able to forget that his own 
is yet to feel all its keenness. And this is the design of 
this great Law — to hold men back from the perpetration of 
wrong, lay a nerve of iron on their hate and malice, and 
make them feel the ties of a common nature, a common for- 
tune, and a common interest. 

1. This Law, then, applies to individuals. Let us take 
home, then, to our hearts this unchanging statute of the 



RETRIBUTIVE PROVIDENCE. 57 

Divine administration, that we may make it for each of us, 
in all our personal relations, a practical guide. 

The application of the Law to individual life can not be 
questioned or doubted. There are impressive instances of 
this retributive Providence in the sacred record, and we may 
learn to lay to heart the lesson as we read. You remember 
how Jacob, by one act of deception, cheated his blind old 
father, and obtained by fraud and lies the blessing Isaac 
designed for his first-born. The fraud was completely suc- 
cessful. The paternal, prophet-voice pledged to him a glo- 
rious inheritance of power and greatness. He went his way 
exulting, he and his mother, over the deceit that so enriched 
him at the expense and loss of his elder brother. Does 
Providence sleep? Seven years he serves, an exile from 
home, Laban the Syrian, for the maid whom he loves. The 
bridal eve finds him rejoicing in the fruit of his patient 
labor. The morning comes, and lo, he has wedded Leah I 
Seven years more must he serve before he can call Rachel 
his bride. He won by deceit, by deceit he has lost. Far 
on in his old age there came to him a bitterer trial yet. 
Joseph, his best-beloved son, though the envy and hatred 
of his brethren, is sold into Egypt. The craft of the con- 
spirators cheats him into the sorrowful belief that Joseph is 
dead — torn and devoured by a wild beast. His gray head 
is stricken very low. He can not be comforted. For years 
he carries about the burden of that bereavement. Joseph 
is not is the thought that preys, an unsolved grief, upon his 
heart. Ah, he deceived his father once. Will he not think 
of it when he understands this Providence fully ? He is 
requited according to his deeds. And the youth of every age 
and time who heap indignities upon a parent's head, who 

4: 



58 RETRIBUTIVE PROVIDENCE, 

refuse them reverence and obedience and embitter their 
last days, are preparing the same bitter cup for their own 
lips when they shall be old and forsaken. Again and again 
has the history of families been monumental of this truth. 
It is a light thing for a headstrong, high-spirited young 
man to cast off his old father's control and have his own 
will and way, however it pain that aged heart. But it is 
not so light a matter when his own locks are gray and his 
comforts few, and failing nature craves soothing and kind- 
ness, to have his sons lift their heels against him. As in a 
mirror, he will see then his own rebellious youth and con- 
fess that God is just. Let me recall to you, also, the 
strange, pathetic narrative of Hainan and Mordecai. You 
tremble at each step over the powerful wiles of the subtle 
courtier to effect the ruin of the man he hates. Your heart 
sinks as he gains one advantage after another, and as you 
look upon the gallows fifty cubits high, you feel that the 
next scene will be the tragic triumph of malignity over 
virtue. And when the revulsion takes place and Hainan 
himself is hanged upon the gallows he reared for the Jew, 
you are well pleased with Providence. This, you say, is 
right retribution. And so it is ; and it is the type of God's 
dealing with all of Haman's successors. 

Look upon the man who is hard and rigid in his relations 
with his fellow-men ; who is a merciless creditor ; who 
oppresses and grinds the poor ; who exacts of suffering pen- 
ury the last farthing he can legally claim ; who holds his 
neighbor bound to hasty pledges, and acts himself only as 
held by strictest legal obligation. Does he forget that over- 
head Providence watches him ? He may use such measure 
if he will, but as God is true it shall be measured to him 



RETRIBUTIVE PROVIDENCE. 59 

again. It is a part of his punishment to be estimated at 
what he is — to have men say, you must bind that man by 
written contracts before you can depend upon him ; to have 
them caution one another how they put themselves into his 
power. And then the day will come when he shall seek 
mercy and mercy shall be denied him. God's Providence 
will bring him into some strait where his plea for forbear- 
ance shall be disregarded, and the same harsh gripe he has 
laid upon others he shall feel on his own sensitive flesh. 

So when an unforgiving and vindictive temper enters 
into some breast of a social circle, or sets itself against the 
peace and harmony of domestic life, determined to secure 
its ends, though it outrage natural affection and common 
humanity ; steeling the heart against prayers and tears and 
the mute appeal of the cheek pale with sorrow and suffer- 
ing; proclaiming an eternal memory of some hoarded 
wrong, not to be expiated by penitence, but by suffering, 
our minds turn with a terror of anticipation to this dread 
Law: "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured 
to you again." Oh, there shall be retribution for this. God 
beholds. He will remember. That unfeeling heart shall 
itself know the stings of un alleviated anguish. A cup full 
of bitterness shall be wrung out for it. Sharp reprisals lie 
in wait for it. For a little it may walk tranquilly forward ; 
how far we know not ; what arrest it shall encounter we 
can not predict ; but we hear a terrible whisper from the 
throne whereon Providence ruleth : " I also will laugh at 
your calamity. I will mock when your fear cometh." God 
does not leave human selfishness, pride, and craft in this 
world to riot at will on their chosen spoil. He reigns to 
execute justice and judgment. And ever and anon He 



60 RETRIBUTIVE PROVIDENCE. 

thrusts his scepter before us and exacts visible recom- 
pense. 

And now let it be written, as with the point of a diamond, 
upon our minds and hearts that we shape the ordering 
and administration of God's Providence over us by the 
measures we adopt and the methods we pursue toward our 
fellows. Men forecast the measures of the Divine retribu- 
tion upon their own heads by the unpitying hardness with 
which they bow down a neighbor's head under sorrowful 
burdens. All our harsh and selfish demonstrations are pro- 
phetic, setting up the type of the requital laid up in Provi- 
dence for our own sensibilities. Let us be warned, coupling 
with every trespass upon another's rights or comforts or 
peace, in each relation of life, the assured expectation of a 
reprisal in God's dealings with us that shall make us know 
in our own quivering nerves the sharpness of the injury we 
have inflicted. And let us crave for ourselves the high 
privilege, for which we have in the words themselves full 
warrant, of turning the warning into a promise, illustrating 
the inflexible rule in beneficent action, sowing in generous 
deeds the seed of a gladdening harvest, and reaping only 
joy and blessing under the fiat of the Will Divine : " With 
what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again." 

Of course, the lesson is as good and impressive for com- 
munities and states, and for the fraternity of Nations, as for 
individuals; and its illustrations in history, on the broader 
scale, are open to the world's reading, for the tuition of 
mankind. But upon this larger field of evidence we can 
not now enter. The volumes of all the past show in their 
illumined pages the instructive and warning fulfilment of 
the great executive Law. 



VI. 



FOR THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

CHKISTS HUMILIATION. 

" And took upon Him the form of a servant."— Phil. ii. 7. 

MY theme will be, the Humiliation of Christ %n assum- 
ing our Nature. This particular view will by no 
means include the total height of that condescension down 
the infinite spaces of which the Saviour traveled, to work 
out our redemption; but if we lose something in compre- 
hensiveness by this restriction, we may gain as much in 
distinctness and unity. 

This Humiliation was not the least trial-task of the Son 
of God. Think of it for a moment in human relations. Can 
you propose anything harder to Rank and Fortune than that 
they should give up all their state and consideration, and 
pass out into obscurity and want ? Is it an easy thing to 
approach one whose feet have been along the eminences of 
human condition and make him willing to forego the splen- 
dors and honors of such a position, and take his lowly 
way through the vales "? Many a man would sacrifice health, 
principle, conscience, almost life itself, before he would 
consent to such a transition. 

By the testimony of all history, there is not a nobler pas- 
sage in the life of our stainless Washington, than that 



62 CHRIST S HUMILIA TION, 

wherein he appears before the Congress of his country with 
victory on his helm, the proud affection of the army, the 
idolatry of the whole nation, the sword of his battles in his 
hand, and laying down his commission at their feet, retires 
to the unambitious walk of a private citizen in the quiet 
shades of Vernon. What other conqueror like him, what 
Bonaparte of human greed would have let slip such an op- 
portunity of seating himself on a throne, and building up an 
Autocratic Dynasty for his house ? 

Such illustrations do only feebly prepare our minds to 
approach the reality we have undertaken to set forth. It is 
making the Finite a stepping-stone to the Infinite. 

This Humiliation of Jesus is seen, first of all, in His tak- 
ing a created nature. I do not now distinguish this nature 
as the human. I speak of it as a subject, creature nature, un- 
der Law, owing obedience and service. What if it were the 
rank of the highest Archangel, wearing the crowns of heav- 
en's princedoms, excelling in might, swift as thought! It 
were still a subject nature, that must bend the knee and veil 
itself before the brightness of the uncreated glory, and cast 
down its crown at the feet of the only King and Lord. It 
must hearken to commands, go and come at the voice of au- 
thority, render account of its ways, and be shut up always 
to the will of another bearing rule. 

Think what a transition this were ! Apply it to Him who 
was " in the form of God," enclosed within that Supernal 
radiance, that was called of old " the Divine similitude " 
when Deity was revealed to creature sight ; thought it no 
robbery to be equal with God, by whom all things were 
made that were made, before whom through the broad spaces 
of the universe, the shining spheres wheeled their marches 



CHRIST S HUMILIA T10N. (53 

at His bidding ! Lead Him down from the pavilion of God- 
head to take even the Seraph's place, to put on livery, to wait 
for orders, to stand till the great monarch say " Go !" to fall 
prostrate in time of worship, to be " charged with folly ! " 
If this were all, it were still an infinite humiliation. Though 
this angel nature be so exalted, yet the mole hill is not so 
lowly beneath the arch as these dignities below the feet of 
Jehovah ! 

Let us take another step. This Humiliation of Jesus con- 
sisted in His coming into Humanity. It was not the angel 
nature which He took, but one that ranked lower yet. Had 
He stooped to the Heavens, that were stooping ; but He 
passed by Seraphim and Cherubim and descended to earth 
and man. It is dishonor enough, if you will think of it 
for a human spirit to be linked with perishable clay, 
The soul with a clod! The ethereal, soaring, GodJike 
nature put into the bondage of the flesh ! Made to look out, 
like a prisoner, as through grated windows, — to gather its 
perceptions, not by roving abroad on the quick strong pin- 
ions of a spirit over all the fields of truth and space, but 
within the close-circling horizon that bounds the ranges of 
sight and touch ! The soul sprung from God, His breath, 
with a body built of red dust ! The soul made in God's 
image, with a body whose organism is essentially like that 
of the brute ! The soul with powers of intelligence chal- 
lenging all reaches of knowledge, with dull unreasoning 
matter! The soul, with a destiny of endless progression, a 
wealth of life Eternity can not exhaust, with a mortal 
brother, which to-day throbs with animated life, to-morrow 
shall feed the worm ! This is an alliance strange and 
humbling enough. But think of the eternal, uncreated 



64 CHRIST S HUMILIA TWIST. 

spirit coming into such bonds to the earthy, to know its 
feebleness, bear its infirmity, quiver with its anguish, shud- 
der and gasp with its death-throes ! But it is a still lower 
depth of this Humiliation, that this Humanity is sinful and 
ruined. Once it had visits from angels and daily compan- 
ionship with God. But it is now a denied and dishonored 
nature. Shame sits upon its brow. It is in grossest disre- 
pute, throughout the loyal realms of the Great King. Its 
history is one of rebellion, of foulest vices, of deepest cor- 
ruption, of horrors of crime ! To take such a nature, is to 
come under the shadow of its infamy, even if one keeps the 
purity of an unfallen spirit. 

And yet again, the Saviour came into this nature, as we 
do, by being born into it. This might have been otherwise. 
He might have put on Humanity in the glory and perfec- 
tion of its full-developed manhood. He might have stood 
up in it, as our primal Father, — the first Adam, leaping 
from the dust to the symmetry and stature of earth's Lord. 
But He humbled Himself to be born of a woman. He took 
the infant's feebleness and dependence. He tried the weak 
and tottering steps of early childhood. Oh, look upon the 
burdened Mary as she enters the streets of Bethlehem ! 
Look upon the manger-scene ! Ask, who it is that was 
borne beneath that mother's heart ; who it is that is laid to 
His cradled rest, where " the horned oxen feed," and hear 
the angels answer above the hills, singing to the Shepherds, 
" Christ, the Lord ! " the Lord of life and glory, and say 
if such an entrance into humanity was the least of this 
humiliation ! 

And we must add now to this cumulative argument, the 
lowly condition of humanity to which the Saviour conde- 



CHRIST S'B UMILIA TION. 65 

scended. With equal clay, the condition makes a difference 
almost like another nature. What a state and majesty does 
human Lordship put on ! How regally it sits amid the 
splendors of a Court ! How proudly roll its chariot-wheels 
amid huzzahing crowds ! How many tremble before the 
Conqueror's march ! The great ones of the earth, titled 
and nattered, how diverse their sphere of life from the lot 
of starving penury ! Bat when Jesus came, He stooped 
past all this imperial pomp, " and took upon Him the form 
of a servant ! " More homeless than the birds of the air ! 
More shelterless than the foxes of the field ! Bearing 
hunger, thirst, cold, weariness, friendlessness, desertion, per- 
secution ; treading painfully the sharp flinty path of most 
portionless poverty ! Companioning with fishermen, eating 
with publicans and sinners, with a poor Magdalen only to 
wash His feet with her tears, behold the depth of the 
Saviour's humiliation ! 

And bring suddenly into contrast His own proper exalta- 
tion and glory, — the glory He had with the Father before 
the world was ! Heaven His throne ! Earth with its riches 
His footstool ! The worlds near and afar His tributaries ; and 
as you see Him bending beneath angelhood and kingship 
to the stable and the cornfield, learn anew the meaning of 
the Scriptures, — " Who, though He was rich, for our sakes 
became poor ! " Making " Himself of no reputation," — 
taking " the form of a servant." " Made in the likeness of 
men ! " 

I go no farther now in this demonstration. My theme 
finds its limit here. The Humiliation of Jesus in His one 
act of taking our nature upon Him is the sole picture I hold 
before you to gaze upon. And oh ! that the Spirit may illu- 



66 CHRIST S HUMILTA TION. 

mine the dim canvas on which I have sketched, that its 
lights and shades may be daguerreotyped on our hearts ever- 
more ! 

And now the same view which illustrates the Saviour's 
condescension suggests also the honor put upon our nature 
We have spoken of it as a ruined, denied, dishonored nat- 
ure. But Jesus has put it on. It is in historic, eternal 
alliance with the reigning God. Here is a grace and glory 
for our poor, lost humanity outshining any other in all the 
ranks of created life. Nothing comes so near to God nor 
the bright angelhood as man — God in the likeness of men ! 1 
Heaven knows of it and looks down admiring, amazed. The 
studious angels pore over this wonderful mystery. The dis- 
tant ages of immortality shall hear of it and celebrate it. 
" Hosanna to the Son of David ! Hosanna in the highest ! " 
But for the Sin, the Fall, this had not been; man had lived 
his happy earthly lifetime through and then been trans- 
lated ; kept always, as at the first, " a little lower than the 
angels ! " Now, elevated by such union as far above them 
as the seat at the right hand transcends their level before 
the throne. 

And here is the assurance of sympathy for us in the heart 
of Christ. Our human brother — oh, how we cling to this 
name, Iioav comforting to speak it in sorrow, bereavement, 
and doubt ! All our feelings He can understand, not now 
because He is omniscient, but because He has had experience 
of them. How this conviction wins us to Christ! What a 
pity for us there ! What a sheltering tenderness ! What a 
full, throbbing sympathy, that could not be more real if it 
could fall upon our neck and weep with us, or mingle smiles 
and songs with our own in our happy hours! 



CHRIST'S HUMIL1A TION. 67 

Here is the love of Jesus magnified. There are no such 
benefactors of an earthly sort that come into the very place 
of the sufferer and take his hard lot upon themselves to lift 
him to their opulence and luxury. 

Howard visited the dungeons of Europe. He did not take 
the captive's cell as his home, the captive's sentence upon his 
head. This grace of Jesus stands alone. The visible and 
touching memorial of it is again before us. Come to the 
feast adoring our Saviour, the Son of God, clasping to our 
hearts our Saviour, the Son of Man ! 



TIL 

FOE A TIME OF PUBLIC CONCERN. 

PEAYEE IN DA¥GEE. 

"And He was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow; and they 
awake Him and say unto Him, Master, carest Thou not that we perish? " — 
Mark iv. 38. 

THE chief interest of this scene, to one seeking for its 
spiritual lessons, is in what it discloses concerning our 
intercourse with God in prayer, and the instinct of prayer to 
God in time of trouble. 

It is good, in tranquil hours, to gather tuition for bur- 
dened to-morrows ; to store mind and heart with practical 
wisdom for coming days of excitement, fear, and peril. 
What lies behind the forward horizon, we never know. "We 
may be sure it can hardly be all clear sky. There will be 
some clouds lifting there, red- veined and with the thunders 
in them. And the soul is wise that gathers under its feeble- 
ness, before the strain comes, the supports of a plighted 
Omnipotence, and learns the secret of abiding peace while 
its peace is yet undisturbed. 

We see, first of all, in our Scripture how trouble brings 
men to their knees. 

Jesus and His disciples had spent the Sabbath in Caper- 
naum. The Jews kept their Sabbath so rigidly, from even- 
ing to evening, that they would not within those hours seek 
even the healing of their sick, and deserved in their ritual 



PR A YER IN DANGER. Q$ 

self-righteousness the Saviour's reproof, " Go ye and learn 
what that meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice." 
When the sun of this Sabbath had gone down, the multi- 
tudes gathered around the Great Healer, thronging Him 
with those who were diseased with natural maladies and 
those who were possessed with devils, " and He cast out the 
spirits with His word and healed all that were sick." He 
seems to have lingered by the seashore as long as there was 
one needing His care, one miraculous cure to be performed. 
Then, as the crowds thickened and His work was ended — 
it being no part of His ambition to draw and detain the gaze 
of men — He gave the command to depart to the other side. 
And the disciples spread the sails of their little fishing craft, 
and, with their Master on board, glided down the quiet 
lake toward the coast of the Gadarenes. 

Quiet and serene was the Lake at their starting. But the 
sea is proverbially treacherous and deceitful. And of all 
deceitful and treacherous seas, that sea of Galilee bears the 
palm. Deep-basined among bold hills, with valley gateways 
between, shutting in by day an intense and sultry heat, with 
chilly nights descending from the hilltops upon its bosom, 
up and down those valley passes sweep often, after the day 
is done, blasts whose fierceness and fury are indescribable. 
One moment all is still and calm, and air and sea seem to be 
pulseless. The next, roaring through the ravines, sudden 
and savage as a beast of prey, the tempest leaps upon the 
waters. The mariners of Gennesareth need to be wary and 
bold and strong. The Galilean fishermen who followed 
Jesus were familiar with the perils of this inland navigation. 
But on this Sabbath evening they suffered no special appre- 
hension. Their Master, weary and worn with the intense 



70 PRA YER IN DANGER, 

life of the day, crowned with the busy work after nightfall, 
had laid Himself down in the stern of the boat and was rest- 
ing the overburdened humanity. And why should He be 
disturbed? The sailors felt no fear. They had no need of 
His aid. Let Him sleep. They were sufficient for all the 
demands of the hour. So as they floated out from Caper- 
naum they uttered no call npon His protecting power. They 
confided in their own strength and skill. Ah ! but that was 
a vain confidence ! The treacherous elements suddenly com- 
bined their forces. The wild tempest awoke them from this 
dream of security. The sea wrought. The waves lifted 
themselves up on high. The wind was boisterous. Dark 
night was round about them. The small open boat labored 
hard. At oar and helm and sheet there were strong and 
accustomed hands, and hardy frames, and the contest was 
joined. But this was no common and short-lived gust. 
Blacker grew, the gloom, more troubled the Lake, fiercer the 
storm. " The waves beat into the ship," testifies Mark, " so 
that it was now full." " The ship was covered with the 
waves," says Matthew. The craft was beginning to sink. 
The sailors had come to their extremity. Their art, their 
courage, their endurance were exhausted. Now, then, their 
eyes turn toward that slumbering form. The time has come 
when they must have help or perish. The danger has shown 
them that their last hope is in prayer; that they must look 
for supernatural aid. 

So it was in that storm on the Levant that beat on the 
vessel that carried Jonah. As the gale increased they light- 
ened the trader of her wares ; seamanship and care could 
yet win. No ! they could not bring the ship to land. Then 
they began to cry every man to his God. The Danger made 
them men of prayer. 



PR A YER IN DANGER. 71 

So when the voyage of life goes smoothly with us, when 
the bark that carries our fortunes rides on calm seas and our 
rich ventures are unimperilled, we feel confident and secure. 
If we pray, it may be formally and drowsily. But when 
calamities thicken, when our utmost fortitude is beaten 
down, when there remains no more that we can do to insure 
deliverance and safety, then our eyes look away earnestly 
heavenward, and our pale lips begin to call aloud on God. 

Many a man who utters no pra} r ers in the days of his 
prosperity, who is erect and self-sufficient when his " mount- 
ain stands strong," Adversity humbles ; the heavy pressing 
hand of misfortune brings him upon his knees, and want and 
pain and grief extort his suppliant cries. Men stripped of 
property, or left lonely in bereavement, or tossing without 
relief in dangerous sickness, find it in their hearts, perhaps 
for the first time, to pray. All their blessings, the bright 
days and fruitful seasons of their life, never prompted one 
address to their benefactor ; but deep sorrow and sharp im- 
minent exposure put words of anguished entreaty into their 
lips. 

So a slumbering conscience is silent and prayerless, Men 
live for years in unrepented sin and selfishness, without a 
thought of propitiating that God who has declared that He 
is angry with them every day. But when conscience awakes 
under some light flashed from eternity, when the storm of 
Divine wrath seems about to break on that guilty head, 
when the doom threatened by Divine justice discloses to 
the suddenly-opened vision its nearness and its awfulness, 
and the soul sees that the hopeless grasp of retribution is 
tightening upon it, then it finds a secret place and lifts up 
the Publican's plea, " God be merciful to me a sinner." 



72 PRA YER IN DANGER. 

The time of trouble is thus the time of prayer. And this 
throws light upon God's dealings with men, and families, 
and nations. He sends trouble to make men see their 
weakness and feel their need of Him, and call unto Him for 
help and rescue. The 107th Psalm recites these fluctua- 
tions of God's providence and of man's confidence, and re- 
iterates with every illustration this historic burden : " Then 
they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered 
them out of their distresses." 

The next point is that in trouble, though men go down 
upon their knees, they are apt to lose their faith in the Su- 
preme One. That is the time when they most need faith. 
Sight is darkened ; by what light shall they walk '( The 
lamps of earth are put out ; are the stars shining still ? But 
when the storm is loud and the deep waters are round a 
man's soul and threaten to go over his head, and in help- 
lessness he cries to the Supreme Disposer, though he cries, 
yet he doubts. He prays, yet it is with accents more than 
half despairing. This time he will certainly perish ! All 
is lost. The boat will swim but a little longer. The 
next wave may fill it and sink it. This is the mid-sea. The 
shore is distant. Companions are in the same strait. The 
end is come. Will God suffer it % Yes, it seems as though 
He would. " Master, carest Thou not that we perish ? " 
There is not much hope in that voice. But Storms are obe- 
dient to His will. They come and go at His bidding. No 
billow can rise higher than He permits. He has His own 
all-wise and gracious purposes to accomplish. But a little 
while ago we thought we could trust Him. Is His power 
less, less His pity and faithfulness now ? Oh, we of little 
faith ! 



PR A YER IN DANGER. 73 

How often a good man's way seems utterly hedged up. 
A step more and he touches the impenetrable wall beyond 
which there is no advance, and Destruction is close behind 
him. He is in such straits as never before. Now, then, 
God's deliverances have exhausted themselves. So Israel 
stood with the Red Sea dashing its spray in their faces, the 
mountains on the right, and Egypt's power sharpening its 
crescent wrath behind. 

How often, in a good and holy cause, we are tempted to 
say the work is too arduous, the obstacles too many, the 
adversaries too mighty; we must give over our endeavor. 
But is it a good and holy cause ? Then Jesus is embarked 
with us. There is one on board who can not sink. The 
ship carries not Caesar's fortunes, but the person and life of 
the Son of God. Low and deep, the storm-filled vessel 
swims heavily on, just ready to founder. But Jesus is in 
the ship. Are we about to perish? But we can not perish 
with Him. Why should we doubt % Our faith, how small ! 

Another point in this prayer of the Disciples is the con- 
fession of their own helplessness. We may be sure they 
did not overrate their danger. They were not likely to be 
panic-struck by a little freshening of the wind. They 
were men inured to hardship and familiar with the sea. 
They had braved many a storm on those waters and weath- 
ered them in safety. No ordinary peril could shake their 
nerves. But this time they knew and felt that they were 
on the brink of destruction. The next wave might carry 
on its white crest "the pale horse" and his rider. There 
was no more that they could do. "Master, we perish." 

The hand of Providence or the tuition of grace must 
bring us to such extremity before our prayer will include 
5 



74 P£A YER IN DANGER. 

this essential element of surrendering self-confidence. We 
must be stript of self-reliance, or our call upon God is not 
one which He will regard. So long as we feel we have ex- 
pedients that may prevail our strength holds out ; we have 
not tried the last desperate measure possible to us ; our 
summons of supernatural aid is qualified. It is calling for 
a partner to join his capital to ours, rather than for a deliv- 
erer. The spirit of the prayer must be " Lord, save or we 
perish." So, in the discipline of life, God puts us not 
merely into danger, but pushes us on to extremities ; He 
takes away our last hope ; He leaves us sinking, and then 
our call is unqualified. If we are saved then, it will not be 
our hand that has wrought the rescue. 

Again, Prayer in danger, if it move God, must appeal to 
Him as the only possible Helper. We are at the end of our 
personal resources, but there may yet come help from some 
other quarter on our own level. We can do no more to keep 
afloat, but our more fortunate companions may bring relief. 
A larger craft, more strongly manned, may bear down to 
our assistance. The storm may relent, the wind may have 
nearly blown itself out, and some favorable change may be 
near at hand. Now, so long as we are left to revolve such 
hopeful peradventures, though ready to confess that our own 
hands are powerless, our prayer to God will hardly magnify 
Him as our only Hope. We must feel there is but one eye 
that can now effectively pity, there is but one mind wise 
enough to devise, there is but one hand strong enough to 
execute. God alone can help. If He do not, our fate is 
fixed. This conviction affects all the quality of our prayer. 

There is another point connected with this midnight 
prayer in peril. The Sa-viour, though present, was asleep. 



PR A YER IN DANGER. 75 

Certainly, His bodily senses were locked in unconsciousness. 
He seemed altogether unobservant of the distress of His fol- 
lowers. The howling of the wind, the rush and roar of the 
sea, the voices of doubt and fear, He seemed neither to heed 
nor hear. When would He wake and cast His own eyes 
abroad upon the storm and discern for Himself the immi- 
nency of the peril, and, self-moved, bring in His mighty in- 
terposition? How silent He is still, how profound that 
slumber ! How can He thus rest amid the loud tumult % 
Oh, if He knew the jeopardy of lives so dear to 
Him ! But still His eyes are veiled and His form is mo- 
tionless. Yes, He will wait till they can wait no longer. 
He will not rouse Himself till they rouse Him with their 
touch and call. It is strange and trying, this apparent 
unconsciousness of, and indifference to, their danger ; but it 
has its purpose. It brings those imperiled ones, in the last 
anguish of breathless haste, close to His side, and lends to 
their suppliant voices a desperate urgency. 

And amid the fluctuations of our earthly life God in 
Heaven sometimes seems to slumber long, while our need 
waxes sorer. We have adventured for Him in some good 
undertaking ; our voyage is for His service and glory. Will 
He not see us safely through ? The storm rages unrebuked. 
Where does He hide Himself? We have leagued our 
strength against some evil which He hates. He must be in 
sympathy with us. But the struggle is too hard for us. 
Will He suffer us to be overcome ? Will He give to wrong 
and violence the victory ? He shows no sign of interference, 
His chariot wheels delay, He launches no thunderbolts of 
power. How trying is this silence ! Is the boast of the 
wicked true, " How doth God know, and is there knowledge 



76 PR A YER IN DANGER. 

in the Most High ? " This calmness, this undemonstrative 
patience, this seeming indifference of God when a just cause 
or a child of God is brought into deepest straits, how unac- 
countable it is ! Why does He not arise and gird Himself 
and shake terribly the earth ? Are there couches of repose 
in Heaven ? Does God sleep % " The Creator of the ends 
of the earth, who fainteth not, neither is weary," has He a 
pillow on which He lays His head in unconsciousness ? How 
could His silence and inaction be more profound ? 

Ah, He waits in these methods of His discipline to try 
our faith. He waits to exhaust our strength and hope, and 
with them our tenacious, vital spirit of self-dependence. He 
waits till the conditions of prevailing prayer are nurtured 
and fulfilled in us by our extremity. He waits till w T e can 
wait no longer, till the feeling becomes sharp, with painful 
acuteness, that we can not do without Him. He waits till 
we go to Him to rouse Him, till we pierce His heavy ear 
with keen supplications, till we clasp His listless hand as our 
only hold upon life. 

How often and grievously we misinterpret God's silence 
and delay to answer, wronging Him and our own souls ! 
If we do not need God, He will maintain His distance and 
silence. If we do, we must go to Him and make sure of 
rousing Him. He sends Imperious Danger as a friendly 
messenger to lead us, w T hen we can wait no longer, all ear- 
nest and hurried to His presence, that we may fall into the 
shelter of His arms. 

We have only further to observe that the call of the Dis- 
ciples in their extremity brought them relief. They did not 
perish. The hungry sea was robbed of its prey. The winds 



PRAYER IN DANGER. 77 

that conspired with the waves were baffled. The sinking 
boat floated safely to shore. The mariners received no harm. 
They came out of the jaws of the devouring peril without a 
wound and enriched with a great and memorable lesson of 
faith in their Lord and Leader. 

When they went to Him and woke Him, then He stood 
up. There went forth all-controlling power on His word. 
" He rebuked the wind and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. 
And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm." 

He was honored as Master of the Storms, Ruler of Tem- 
pests. He asserted thus for Himself, the old divine preroga- 
tive which the Psalmist ascribes to Jehovah, " The floods 
have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice ; 
the floods lift up their waves. The Lord on high is mightier 
than the noise of many waters, yea than the mighty waves 
of the sea." 

And thus Jesus is proclaimed, amid earth's wildest com- 
motion, the sure and strong Deliverer of His people. 

Are any of us suffering under the weight and sharpness 
of any personal pressure? Have we a physical pain or in- 
flrmity or bondage that overmatches our strength and endur- 
ance 'I 

Tell me your secrets ! Is there a black cloud in our sky 
that hides the light from our eyes, broods our path in sable 
shadow, and drops down thunder notes of warning? It is 
God's gracious call to us to use the endow T ment of Prayer. 
It is His faithful messenger to bring us to His waiting pres- 
ence for help and relief. It is our warrant to wake the 
sleeping Master with hurried voice and touch and summon 
His omnipotence to our rescue. 

Are any of our beloved ones passing through the deep 



Y8 PRA YER IN DANGER. 

waters of affliction, or through flames of fiery trial? It is 
not that their souls may be made desolate under such visits 
of Providence, nor that ours may drink deep with them of 
the same cup of bitterness, but that we may take up the 
office of tender and availing intercession, and pay our debt 
of love to them through the interposing mercy and consola- 
tion of a prayer-answering God. 

. Are we made to tremble for any great and good Cause, 
carrying in it the wealth of human hopes for the Life that 
now is, or the upbuilding of some portion of the walls of 
the everlasting Kingdom of Truth and Righteousness ? It is 
not that we should despair of the Golden Age and doubt 
whether its dawn will ever brighten the Orient, but that we 
should look through and above the shadowed firmament to 
Him who sits on the circle of the Heavens and whose voice, 
" Let there be light ! " precedes every dawning, and beseech 
from Him the omnific word that ushers in the new illu- 
mined eras of Time's lengthening story. 

Ah, if we could understand the intent of these Divine Ap- 
peals in the changes of our Providential nurture, we should 
cease to tone our voices with complaints and to cast re- 
proachful looks upward, and should feel that each question 
thus raised concerning any treasure of our hearts, for the 
present or for the endless Future, was a question which we 
were invited to carry on burdened souls to infinite Wisdom, 
Power, and Love, and wait its happy solution there ! 



VIII. 

HUMAN ACCOUNTABILITY. 

"So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God." — Rom. 
xiv. 12. 

IT is reasonable that men should give account of them- 
selves to God. He gave them Life, it is reasonable that 
they should report to Him what use they make of Life. 
He furnished them all the forces of their being, — it is rea- 
sonable they should show Him how they have employed 
those forces. He made them tenants in His manor of 
earth, — it is right He should call them, at the expiration of 
their lease, to a reckoning. He stationed them at their 
posts of duty, — He must know how they have discharged 
their appointed functions. He commissioned them as Stew- 
ards to one another, and their race, — it is to Him they 
must render account of their stewardship. They are here 
on trial, as probationers, — under discipline for eternity. 
How has the trial gone with them, — what are the fruits of 
the discipline ? They must make answer. This probation 
has its limit of continuance, — it is reasonable in itself, due 
to the nature of such trial, and useful to all interested be- 
holders, that its results should be gathered up and publicly 
rehearsed. Men have large liberty in the present life, they 
are free, they enthrone and act out their own choices, — 
God's Moral Government is a Government of Law and 
motive over free minds ; it is reasonable they should be 



80 HUMAN ACCOUNTABILITY. 

called to an account for this liberty, say what they have 
done with their freedom, — how they chose, how they willed r 
what they have wrought. On this choosing, willing and 
acting their Immortality hinges, and before they enter upon 
their changeless heritage, it is fitting that there should be a 
summing up and a setting forth of the grounds upon which 
the eternal issue is declared. So it is nothing arbitrary, 
but altogether coincident w T ith reason and equity, that 
men's eyes should be, through all time, turned forward to a 
great day of Trial and Award. And this clear announce- 
ment of accountability and its issues crowns its reasonable- 
ness. Men are forewarned. They will not be taken by sur- 
prise. They understand, that every day, swift lapsing be- 
tween its rising and setting sun, is to come up in review. 

Let us seek, now, to make the conception of this fact 
vivid and impressive. 

It teaches us that every endowment we receive, in Crea- 
tion and Providence, is a sacked trust. In this view, we 
can look upon nothing we are or have which is absolutely 
our own. Each material force, each faculty of mind, each 
energy of spirit, is to be administered by us, as a charge 
put into our keeping, for the full scope, and use, and reve- 
nue of which we are held answerable. 

Our feet are made swift to run, — agile to leap and to 
climb. They are not an idle appendage, — nor mere serv- 
ants of our personal convenience. They are a trust. Whither 
shall they run ? On what errands? What path shall they 
beat hard with daily treading ? To what use do we put 
their agile lightness? Is it duty or pleasure that quickens 
them ? We must account for them. 

We have fingers that are cunning in skill, sensitive of 



HUMAN A CCO UN TABILIT Y. 81 

touch, strong in their clasping. What do these hands 
handle through all the hours ? What does their skill con- 
struct ? What does their strength move ? What toil do 
strength and skill together undertake % we ought to ask 
with the lapse of every day. The full answer will one day 
be given. Our eye mirrors every object within its scope of 
vision. The image of that object is painted on the visual 
nerve. From that image sensations travel swift to the 
brain, and enter with their subtle leaven into the intelligent, 
moral life of the soul. We can direct this eye as we please. 
We can look up to the sky overhead. We can look down 
npon the dust at our feet. We can look away over broad 
landscapes. We can gaze into human faces; upon the 
works of art ; upon the record of man's thoughts, and of 
God's thoughts. We can look upon objects and scenes that 
shall fill the soul with corrupting images and kindle the 
scathing fires of passion. How do we "use our eyesight \ It 
is a trust for which we must give account. Within the 
guardian portals of the lips lies the most curious and won- 
derful muscle of our frame. It syllables articulate language. 
It makes thought vocal. It gives audible interpretation 
to the soul's subtlest fancies. The resolves of the Spirit 
march forth by this outlet. In soft whispers it utters the 
words of affection. Every challenge one mind would send 
another, or the world of mind, this faithful message-bearer 
conveys. What does it say for us ? What voices do we 
give forth? We can speak holy words, in prayer or profa- 
nation; pure words, or words unclean. "Out of the same 
mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing." The tongue set- 
teth on fire the course of nature, and it glows with seraphic 
fervors. " It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison," and 



82 HUMAN A CCO UNTABILITY. 

it quivers like a harp to loftiest praise. It is a most solemn 
charge, and we are responsible for it to God, to whom we 
shall give account. 

And the Face itself has with every man the power of 
silent expression. It gives out the pensive look of sadness 
or the radiant light of joy. It shows unconquerable firm- 
ness or yielding softness. It gathers to a frown of hate or 
brightens to a smile of friendship. It curls itself to scorn 
or breathes gentle approbation. It sharpens itself in suspi- 
cion or relaxes to the openness of serene and placid trust. 
Make the tongue a mute captive, and the face may still be 
eloquent of all the thoughts of the heart, and must answer 
for its record in the day of account. And there is the whole 
force of Manner, often a very mighty force, the most re- 
markable and potent thing, not seldom, about a man. It 
tells pre-eminently in social life. It repels with some ; it 
wins with others. It fences about one with gates of triple 
frost ; it conquers for another even the hearts of enemies. 
How do we use this power ? 

Within us are Appetites and Propensities, taking their 
parentage still from the flesh. We can indulge them as we 
will. This is our liberty. We can pluck every golden 
apple of desire that hangs within reach ; we can fill our- 
selves with natural, sensual good to whatever excess. " But 
know thou," reads the clear-toned warning, "know thou, for 
all these things God will bring thee into judgment." 

And it rests upon each of us to say how the Powers of 
the Mind shall be employed. They are given us in germ , 
and then they develop into maturity, growing with our 
growth and strengthening with our strength, according to 
the nurture they receive. To what discipline and exercise 



HUMAN ACCOUNTABILITY. 83 

shall we put the varied faculties of a reasoning soul ? How 
shall we enrich ourselves with treasures of thought ? What 
banquets shall we spread for the hunger of the mind? 
What books shall we read ? What studies shall we pursue ? 
What voices of living Teachers shall we hear ? And the 
Life-story records every answer. 

And, more explicitly, how shall we fill the chambers of 
Meditation? The Soul never sits alone within her retreat. 
She invites some congenial companionship. She is not alto- 
gether mistress of that retirement. Thoughts she can not 
welcome will sometimes obtrude their presence. Acquaint- 
ances she has made in her idle humor, and which afterward 
she would fain shake off, are pertinacious in their visits, and 
will not be banished. But, for the most part, she chooses 
her fellowships. She calls in the thoughts in whose silent 
eircle she finds most agreeable communion. And then, in 
such alliance, a swift process of assimilation goes on. The 
Soul becomes like her chosen intimates. She takes on the 
hue and character of those objects with which she is most at 
home. And here is another item in the final reckoning: 
We must answer for these intimacies of thought. 

And what an artist is Imagination ! What a pencil is 
hers — what colorings, what creative power ! What forms 
and scenes she paints for the Soul's great gallery of ideal 
things ! Like other artists, she sometimes takes liberties 
with nature; frugal of drapery, dispensing with costume, 
in fashions preferring the meretricious to the pure and 
chaste. For the dalliance of the Imagination we are held 
accountable. In night-dreams we can not control her, 
though the habits of the day extend their sway with more 
or less sovereignty into the night. But we must take care 



84 HUMAN ACCOUNTABILITY. 

how we dream day-dreams, and into what scenery and so- 
ciety Imagination wanders when awake, for all her footpaths 
are to be retrod in the great review. 

And with every mental power, every affection of the 
heart, and every moral sensibility of the soul will be put to 
the question : What we loved ; what we hated ; what moved 
our sympathy ; w T hat excited our indignation ; what pleased, 
what grieved us ; what was fair and sweet to desire, and 
what our lips pronounced hitter fruit and rejected as ashes. 

And not only for what we are, but for what we have,. 
w^ill the Great Day make inquisition. "You who have 
wealth," the call will come to you, " give in report how you 
have used it." And you begin (you might try a rehearsal 
now for a moment, to hear how it will sound) : " I have fed 
and clothed myself," you say ; " these natural wants I must 
have the right to supply." You go too fast. This account 
must be given in details. You must furnish the items. 
How have you fed and clothed yourself ? What is your 
standard ? Character connects itself with these departments 
of living. Here may spring and flourish Luxury, Pride, 
Vanity, Envy, Sensuality. You see to what points you 
must speak. Go on. " I have fed and clothed my family ; 
I have built my mansion ; I have provided domestic com- 
forts." Specify as you proceed. Is this all? Are there 
no outside expenditures ? "Ah, I have gratified my love 
of music, my delight in art, my interest in foreign travel, 
my relish of hooks." You stop again. You have not 
reached the end? All this is self-providence. Have you 
never heard the faint voice of penury ? Have you never 
seen the outstretched hands of orphanage ? Have you never 
echoed the widow's sigh ? Have you never stooped your 



H UMA JV A CCO UN TA BILI TV. 85 

brow beneath the low portal where Sickness, Yice, Famine, 
and Misery keep carnival together ? And then the gloomy 
Pagan world, the floating population of the Sea, the be- 
nighted millions of Earth — what appropriations through 
these broad, deep channels \ The books are kept there, if 
they are not here. 

And the " strong box," which, with some, like a child's 
miniature banking-house, has no opening, save the chink at 
the top through which the gold slides in, always receiving, 
never giving out, close and dumb to appeals circling it on 
every side, that almost make the conscious eagles flutter 
forth, self-moved — that box will give in its testimony on 
the trial day. 

And you have Influence, power to wield and sway others. 
It may reside in your official place. It may lie in your 
ample fortune. It may be the crown of an educated mind. 
It may be the homage paid to eloquent speech. It may be 
the bright and soft, but strong, attraction of a warm heart 
or a sweet face. It may be the iron scepter of a stern will. 
No matter in what it resides, it is another trust to be 
faithfully administered, and, however administered, to be 
accounted for. 

And all of you have Time. And Time has its measures, 
from years down to pulsing seconds. And each second 
speeds away from us on electric flight to tell the recording 
Angel what we were about. Oh, solemn trust of Time ! — 
the portal of Eternity, the seed-hour for an endless harvest 
season. No man can ignore this trust. A Day dawns 
upon you. You lift your head from the pillow with open 
eyes. It is morning, and your accountableness begins with 
that first report of sight. What are your earliest thoughts % 



86 HUMAN A CCO UNTABILIT Y. 

They freight these early moments. You go forth from 
your chamber. Pause yet on the threshold. Are you 
ready to go forth ? Are you in haste ? Not one moment 
for an upward look, for a bended knee ! You have slept 
well; you are refreshed ; God's eye has watched you. JSTo 
breath of Praise, your morning incense, floating heaven- 
ward ? Well, the moments will not stay. You greet the 
home circle, and your domestic influence for the day begins, 
with what auspices, under what sanctions? And your 
tasks call you. You bow your neck to the daily yoke — not 
alone — and your social influence for the day begins to fall 
silent as dews. And the long working hours, as each chime 
repeats their lapse, what do they say of you? They say 
you are "diligentP Yes. " Skillful," " successful." But 
what do they say of your thoughts, your emotions, your 
purposes and aims through all their rounds? The sunlight 
wanes, and work is over. What now ? Amusement, self- 
improvement, sweet household converse, stupid drowsiness % 
And your head touches the pillow again, 'whether flrst 
bowed, or no, in the evening sacrifice, and that day is spent 
and gone, and lays up its story in full chapters for the great 
final day of review and publication. 

Will you say then what you are, or what you have that si 
not a solemn trust ? And as a Trustee, the supreme Pro- 
prietor, who gave you your commission, will call for your 
rendering of each item in the long account. 

Every Relation of life into which you come voluntarily or 
involuntarily must be called up. As a father you must give 
account. Are you all a father should be ? And as a 
mother, what does this peerless tie witness for you ? As a 
child, owing such a debt of Love, Reverence, Obedience, 



HUMAN A CCO UNTABILIT Y. 8f 

are you truly filial ? As husbands and wives, as brothers 
and sisters, as companions and friends and neighbors, as 
schoolmates and fellovycraftsmen, as .a citizen, as a magis- 
trate, — in whatsoever sphere and fellowship of all Life's con- 
federations, the true and faithful Record must be filled out 
and voiced forth. 

Oh ! let us ascend some height of self-inspection, climb 
to some summit on which the light of Eternity falls, and 
glance over all the field of our current life, — the whole 
inner, the whole outer domain, — and listen as the voices go 
up, listen as though the morning of the last day were break- 
ing to this witness-bearing of the present. 

From this height we discern that nothing in our whole 
life is unimportant. Even every light word must be re- 
peated and weighed in the eternal balances. Every step 
leaves a footprint, then to be measured and identified, and 
to testify whence, and whither, and vsherefore. Every play 
of feature, every slight but meaning gesture, the curling of 
the lips, the knitting of the forehead, the lifting of the eye- 
brow, the shrug of the shoulder, has helped to guide the 
current of human destinies, has had its place in the day's 
story, and must come up to be estimated and passed upon 
before the final tribunal. 

From this height of self-survey and of instructed antici- 
pation we can judge ourselves now. The light of that com- 
ing day shines down upon all the track this side. What is 
the character of our present thinking, feeling, and acting % 
Hold them up to that distant but searching beam, and we 
get the true answer. Some purposed indulgence may be 
sweet now to the taste ; how, then, shall we judge of its 
healthfulness and wholesomeness ? The present gratification 



88 HUMAN A CCO UNTABILIT Y. 

of passion may thrill the senses with a delirious joy ; what 
will its memory do for us then f Our eye sparkles with de- 
light as some fascinating scene rises now before us ; how 
will this eye look back upon it from the portal of Eternity \ 
Applying this test to every step of life's brief journey we 
can hardly ever go blindly wrong. 

And then we have, as it were, a portable tribunal, a kind 
of omnipresent Day of Judgment within our own breasts. 
We can know our standing in God's sight. We can now 
sentence ourselves on every count of our indictment. We 
need make no blunders as to Law, Evidence, and Equity. 
Conscience holds aloft her miniature balances, and, in mercy 
to us, writes now, over our sins and follies, the mystic 
" Tekel" of the Chaldean revel. Nay, she anticipates and 
forewarns us ere the act is committed, that we may keep 
clear of guilt, and so of condemnation. 

And whenever we feel troubled by inequalities in the di- 
vine dealings, and our souls are visited by envies and jeal- 
ousies, and we murmur that others are — in wealth or health, 
or place, or personal endowments, or in any nerve of influ- 
ence — more favored than we, let us remember that we have 
here, in this graduation of accountableness, a grand and com- 
pensative rectifier of all inequalities. According to our 
gifts must be the reckoning. The crowned ones of Earth, 
the strong in whatever forces of being, bear before the 
waiting Judgment, the heaviest burdens of Responsibility. 

So each of us £oes forward to his account to abide its is- 
sue. And the most solemn chapter of Review will be that 
which includes directly the care of the Soul, — that Jewel 
of great price, — and this especially with the dwellers in 
Christian lands, with men who hear the Gospel and who 



HUMAN A CCO UNTABILIT Y. 89 

have the Bible in their native tongue. A holy Law, a ruined 
Nature, a Judgment Day, a crucified Redeemer, evidently 
set forth ; Sabbaths shining upon you, temples lifting up 
their gates, earnest voices entreating us, the Spirit and the 
Bride together pleading, Oh, my friends, if we neglect sal- 
vation how can we give account for these ! 

This Sabbath retires from us into the past. Yet a few 
hours and its departing footstep is heard, then heard no 
more. The day and its themes we shall dismiss from 
thought, and pass on to hail the light of to-morrow's sun. 
But we have not so done with the day, nor with this mes- 
sage of God. Each of these flying moments of which we 
take careless adieu or none at all, we shall live over again „ 
more freshly, more vividly than now. 

Oh, from henceforth, let this voice within our soul never 
be silent, — " evert one of us shall give account of him- 
self to God ! " 



6 



IX. 

LOVING AND KNOWING. 

" He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is Love."— 1 John iv. 8. 

INCONCEIVABLY the most impressive and controlling 
truth for the mind of man is the truth concerning God. 
The certainty of wreck is not greater for a rudderless ship 
on the sea, than for the man on the voyage of life, of whom 
it must be written, " God is not in all his thoughts." It is 
one of the most exalted capacities of our nature that we are 
made capable of knowing God. There are indeed mysteries 
in His being the depths of which no finite intellect can 
fathom, the veiled heights of which an archangel's wing 
may not scale. There are mysteries in all life. The strange 
union of flesh and spirit in our own humanity presents many 
a problem that baffles inquiry ; but this does not prevent us 
from knowing one another. Each little pool mirrors the 
sky with all its wealth of starry systems and all its blue 
breadth of immensity. Looking into the pool we see the 
whole majestic canopy ; and God has so made our mind and 
so adjusted it to the solar grandeurs of His own being that 
this small and darkened mirror gives to our eye the features 
of His glorious countenance. 

But with this capability of knowing God, with this in- 
terior volume of revelation ever at hand, we may still re- 
main in profound ignorance of Him ; or we may study Him 



LOVING AND KNOWING. 9| 

partially and perversely ; or our mirror may be so discol- 
ored and obscured that while we have His features, the 
expression that sits upon them may be lost to us in deepest 
shadow. It is then a question of the gravest moment — when 
do we know God — how shall we know Him aright f 

Now it is not enough to try to conceive of Eternity and 
Immensity, and to call that idea God. God is from Eternity, 
God filleth Immensity, but to conceive of duration without 
beginning, without ending, to launch our thought upon the 
boundless sea of space, and find drifting past the isles of 
creation, or circumnavigating the continental universe, that 
this sea is without a shore, brings us no nearer the conception 
and the knowledge of a personal God. Duration itself is 
lifeless and that sea of space has no tides and pulses of con- 
sciousness. We want something more than the conceptions 
of Time and Space to bring out the portraiture of God. 

J^or is it enough that we hear of His Power, and even 
see exhibitions of that Power, until we write it down Om- 
nipotence ; nor that we float like drifting atoms under the 
cope of His Omniscience ; nor that we should discern His un- 
wearying hand holding and guiding the courses of Provi- 
dence ; nor that the strength of His will, the absoluteness of 
His choices, the vastness of His plans, the ubiquity of His 
presence and vigilance and energy, should thus attract our 
recognition and reverence. We do not know God, just by 
knowing His natural attributes and His mental constitution. 
We need to know more of Him than to be able to say He 
is Designer, Creator, Presence, Ruler, and Lord. What is 
this Creator ? What purposes does that autocratic mind bear 
up ? What puts into action, and controls the working of 
these infinite forces of the Godhead; power, intelligence, 



92 LO VING AND KNO WING. 

wisdom, energy, all unlimited. How do they combine ? 
What end do they serve in God % 

If, in human relations, we ask concerning the character of 
one with whom we are to be brought into intimate fellowship, 
it does not enlighten us on the main point to be informed 
how old he is, what his stature is, how strong of arm, how 
swift of foot, how cunning of skill ; that he reasons well, 
that he plans sagaciously, that he has a fixed scheme of life. 
It does not satisfy our final and most controlling solicitude 
when we are told he is an honest man, a truthful man, a man 
of integrity, one who deals justly and uprightly by his fellow- 
men. He may be all this and yet not be the man for our 
choice. We do not know him, after all the testimony, until 
we know him in that nameless quality, or assemblage of 
qualities, which constitutes his disposition. 

And the Scripture declares that we do not know God till 
we know Him in that essence of His character, that begin- 
ning, middle, and end of His being, that all-pervading qual- 
ity which is His true self — "God is Love." We may know 
Him to be strong, but we are ignorant of Him yet. We may 
know Him to be wise, but He is still a stranger. We may 
know Him to be unchanging, but that tells us nothing of 
what it is that is so immutable. 

The great Supreme One has not come into the light of 
our upward gazing till this inscription be legible above 
His throne — God is Love. 

And now this further truth appears, that no one can know 
God as a God of Love, even when thus revealed, without 
first himself loving. We can conceive of power without lov- 
ing, and of wisdom without loving, and of eternity and im- 
mensity and omnipotence, but none of these conceptions is 



LOVING AND KNOWING. 93 

God, nor all together. We may study the manifold vol- 
umes of the Divine works and range to either pole of His 
orbed dominions ; Nature may unveil her mysteries and sci- 
ence yield up her secrets, and we might dissect the scheme 
of God's universe and show in detail all its articulated parts, 
and master thus His thoughts as Builder of Creation ; and 
still the Scripture remains, "He that loveth not Jcnoweth not 
God." We can see why this must be so; for, first, it is only 
on the basis of what we are ourselves, as made in the image 
of God, that we can know anything of God, as personal, 
rational, and moral. Is God personal f Is not all natural 
Law a part of God ? Is not light a Divine substance and 
effluence ? Is not heat Divine ? Is not space diffused Deity % 
Is not duration the mere ceaseless flow of God's existence? 
Is not gravitation simply a nerve of God's being 1 Does 
not God thus compose things that are 1 — His own life throb- 
bing in the seasons, His own breath coming and going in 
gales and calms, His nourishing ichor coursing up in herb 
and tree, flower and fruit, His rationality stirring our brain, 
His sensibility working our heart, His energy acting all re- 
sults ; so that Nature and Man are but other forms of God 
and other names for God, and this unseen, wide-circling 
Divine force the only Reality ? Why is not the Pantheist 
right? Because we know ourselves, as God's offspring, to 
be distinct personalities. We live and move and act within 
our own consciousness. We originate our own choices and 
doings. We are walled off from all other identities and 
walled up to our own identity. We know this ; we know 
our thoughts to be our own, our feelings ours and not an- 
other's, and another's not ours. We are separated sharply 
from the lives that repeat our model and style of living at 



94 LOVING AND KNOWING. 

our side. So we say we may be creatures of God, but we 
are ourselves. We are not Divine. We are personal, indi- 
vidual and distinct, and then we reason up to God. He who 
made us after Himself, who thought us before He made us, 
who planned and chose and purposed, must have a mind, a 
will, a consciousness, a being, a personality of His own, as 
we have. What it is to be such a personality we could 
never know, save as we know it from ourselves, our own 
constitution and consciousness. 

In the same way we dissect this personality of God on 
the basis of our self-knowledge, as made in God's image. 
We think, and thus we know God to be a thinking being. 
We reason, and so we know He is rational. We choose, and 
He must be a voluntary being. We feel, with a wide vari- 
ety of affections and emotions, and He can not be more 
restricted than we. We put forth energies to accomplish 
our designs, instituting long series of processes for some 
final end, and have our character, as we are perfectly aware, 
not in the individual act, which means nothing and reveals 
nothing taken by itself, but in that final end. And God 
must therefore have His schemes of operation, upon which 
He expends His working power and the grand and all-con- 
trolling sovereignty of His final end. All this we know of 
God by having ourselves and the truth that we are made in 
His image. We can not conceive of being, of any being, 
without looking first at ourselves. What is it to think, feel, 
desire, deliberate, choose, and act? Our consciousness is 
the only revelation here. We can not understand principles 
of action, nor elements of character, except as we are ob- 
servers of self. And so it is irresistibly seen to be true that 
it is only as ourselves loving that we can understand what 



LOVING AND KNOWING. 95 

it is for God to love. And if this be omitted on our part ; 
if we need a distinct organic vision in us to discern every 
organ of God's spiritual life ; if this one organism be in us 
crushed into blindness, and we know God to be a rational, 
intelligent, voluntary Power, but can not, for want of the 
vision in ourselves — the mirror here to display the truth 
there — see that He is Love, how we distort and misrepre- 
sent God. How ignorant we are yet of His true life ! It 
must be so. What it is to love we know not till we feel it. 
What it is to forget self and to be absorbed in the life and 
good of another we cannot conjecture, unless we ourselves 
have had experience. We know God from the image, and 
we have blotted and blurred the grandest part of the image. 
We can sublime our ideas of power ; we can make out an 
infinite thinker ; we can carry up all the mental processes 
belonging to our nature and to God's into measureless 
heights, but what does this avail if we know not, because of 
our personal ignorance, because of the vacancy in our own 
consciousness, what loving is % We have not God, we know 
not God, for " God is Love." 

Again : In respect to all passions and emotions, it is only 
by being in sympathy with them that we can understand 
them. This is true even with the sterner parts of character. 
Virtue itself, in the sense of loyalty to principle and right, 
is in great measure a mystery to those who are practically 
indifferent to its supremacy. They think, perhaps, it is a 
lofty self-respect, or a sense of what is decent and becom- 
ing, or a high appreciation of a peaceful conscience, or an 
unchanging fixedness of will, or the resolute maintenance 
of one's own opinion. It is a part of that conception that, 
if they could only name it, this virtue has its price — that 



96 LOVING AND KNO WING. 

there are, if they knew just where to look for them, consid- 
erations that would outweigh this nameless, intangible thing 
and sweep it aside. That it has no price ; that worlds could 
not buy it ; that Death could not fright it ; that martyr 
fires could not make it blench ; that love, which is stronger 
than death, could not bribe it to be less ; that it can not be 
other than it is, because it is what it is — this is a mystery 
to such observers. It must be felt before it is known. 
Who can understand a patriot's ardor that does not himself 
love his country ? Who can appreciate a naturalist's enthu- 
siasm that has no taste for natural science, or fathom the 
feeling that leads him on over wold and wild with hammer 
and microscope, or the studious vigils that keep him bend- 
ing over some abstract problem through the still midnight, 
or the almost insane joy with which he leaps upon his dis- 
covery and shouts " Eureka ! " so that the nations hear him ? 
Is it not insanity ? How impossible it is for the most of us 
to answer. 

Who but a parent knows a parent's care, or can tell what 
feeling it is that looks out of a parent's eyes ? Who knows 
a mother's heart but the mother herself; what she feels as 
she clasps her babe to her bosom or bends over its cradled 
nest? Any of us can see the embracing arms and the 
stooping form, but what eyes can read that which the heart 
itself can never tell ? Who can walk by a mother's side in 
her lonely chamber, after bereavement, and share that deep, 
inner, sacred solitude with her? No mortal. One only 
can do that, and it is He who made the heart. 

He who made a mother's heart ! Ah, what must He be, 
then ! He who breathed a little of His own tenderness 
into that fountain, what is the depth of that uncreated ten- 



LOVING AND KNOWING. 97 

derness? A parent, from what he feels toward his chil- 
dren, has a stepping-stone by which he can climb toward 
the pitying love of the Great Father ; but what is a step- 
ping-stone, if one would touch the sky? Until self is 
slain ; until all is laid on the altar of beneficent living ; 
until our neighbor is enshrined in our affections, and has 
the freedom of our thoughts and hearts ; until we look upon 
him with dewy eyes and kindling sympathies ; until God's 
life flows in us thus — His the original fountained fullness, 
ours the distributing reservoir, and the blessed stream 
courses through our veins clear, and full, and sweet, — we 
can not know the God of Love. 

Again : It rests with God to reveal Himself to His creat- 
ures. That is a Divine prerogative. The human heart 
may plead, like Moses in the Mount, "Show me Thy glory" 
and unless that plea find favor with God, the longing must 
go unblest. And when that plea is answered, what is it 
that is revealed ? From the cleft of the rock what was it 
that those privileged prophet-eyes beheld ? He who passed 
by proclaimed " the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gra- 
cious, slow unto anger, abundant in goodness and truth." 
And what was this but the outraging of His essential Love ? 
To whom, then, will He withdraw the veil and make this 
revelation ? To those who love Him not, and who, not 
loving Him, can not love their fellow-men ? To sensual, 
selfish, isolated souls who tread right over others' hearts 
and hopes to their own determined ends ? ^ay, indeed. 
Only the pure in heart shall see God ; only those who love 
shall know Him. What if one say, in the pride of -his intel- 
lect, " But I will find out this God, and master this great 
study, ' What God is'"; can he accomplish it, as one sits 



98 LOVING AND KNOWING. 

down resolutely over a foreign language, till every strange 
symbol there interprets its meaning? Ah, God will with- 
draw Himself from such bold explorers. He will drop 
about His presence the drapery of clouds and darkness, or 
with excessive brightness strike blind these too daring eyes. 
Only in the company of His children does He sit down at 
home as a father, and lay aside His state, and permit famil- 
iar approaches, and speak, all gentle and smiling, household 
words, and fill the scene with the light and fragrance of 
household love. 

When we speak of knowing God, we mean more than 
what we experience when we look upon some earthly digni- 
tary, some statesman or warrior or orator of whom we have 
heard, but whom we have never seen until on some festival 
day we gaze at last upon his equipage, and mark his stature 
as he rises and stands, and hear his voice as he addresses a 
public assembly. It is a personal and sacred intimacy of 
which we speak, a dear, confidential friendship, a knowing 
Him as we know the tenderest and truest heart on earth 
that gives back the throbbing of our own, a touching of His 
hand, a looking into His eyes, a hearing of His tender words, 
a consciousness of His nearness, the sunny warmth of His 
smile bathing us, the door of His sheltering bosom open to 
us in all hours of cold and fear and loneliness, His light 
shining upon our darkened path, His strength helping us 
over difficulties, His joy illumining sad hours, His sympa- 
thy bending over us when we droop in grief, His assured, 
unchanging and inalienable faithfulness abiding by us in 
trials and cares and wanderings till the world shall end. This 
is knowing God. We can not tell a stranger of this alli- 
ance ; we have no language for those strange, conscious in- 



LOVING AND KNOWING. 99 

terviews wherein Heaven and earth blend, those speechless 
moments when God and we come together, and down in the 
tongueless joy of our souls the thought throbs silently, "It 
is good to he here. 1 ' This is knowing God. But how could 
one get admittance to such a Mount of , Transfiguration and 
sit with Him who is " God made manifest " unless he were 
a friend of God, had caught the spirit of Love and were liv- 
ing the life of Love ? 

No, the world knows not God. It may acknowledge the 
fact of His sovereignty, it may take His name in legal cov 
enants and compacts as an omniscient witness, it may build 
Him temples ; but, after all, the inscription there is what 
Paul saw upon the fane at Athens — u To the unknown 
God." 

When God asserts His will in laws and penalties, how lit- 
tle the world knows His heart ! When He calls in solemn 
Providences, who guesses what deep emotions pulse in those 
sounding accents % When He touches men's idols and dries 
up the fountains of their joys with His breath, and leads 
them out of the sunshine into darkness and solitude, and 
bids them walk down from the heights of prosperity into the 
shaded and lowly vale, and their voice pleads reproachfully, 
" Why hath He dealt so with us ? " oh, how little they know 
Him ! How near He stands, and yet how far off ! How 
loving, and yet how severe ! How clearly revealed, and yet 
how darkly hidden ! 

Our personal religion must be a religion of love if it have 
God in it. Our zeal must be a zeal not only according to 
knowledge, but according to love. It must be the overflow of 
a deep, deep fountain of tenderness. We must not set upon 
a man to do him good as a highwayman collars his victim. 



100 LOVING AND KNOWING. 

There is a zeal that is hotly sectarian. There is a zeal that 
thinks of consistencies and appearances. There is a zeal 
that is mere self-will, and is, in the strength of this natural 
obstinacy, awfully indomitable. There needs to be a zeal 
that, like Christ's, shall glow and yet be calm, be earnest and 
yet soft-voiced and sweet-spirited and pleading and kindly. 
This zeal can say what it will, and lay prevailing hands 
upon its fellow-men, and bring into action the powers of a 
divine life, because it knows and serves that God who is 
Love. 

To advance in the knowledge of God we must advance in 
Love. We must not be content with loving a little. To 
love without the anguish of loving is still to be ignorant of 
God, or to know Him only afar off. Love like His is a suffering 
love, a self-sacrificing love — love that hath its garden sorrow, 
its cross of Calvary. This is that sublime exhibition of God 
which most clearly shows the w T orld His heart — God giving 
up His Son, God in Christ bearing the sign of shame and 
straining with fainting step toward the Hill of Sacrifice, and 
uttering Divine clemency when the pain was sharpest — 
" Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 
To love and to suffer, so to love as to suffer, to suffer the loss 
of all for the sake of what is so beloved, this is to come into 
the secret of God's loving and to know Him by the free- 
masonry of kindred Love. Are we capable of it? 

Can we love a trespasser and hate his sin % Can we see that 
an offending brother has done us wron<* and vet love the 
wrongdoer ? Can we be indignant at some gross offense against 
our holiest standard of Right, something that touches us per- 
sonally where we are most sensitive, and yet cleave tenderly 
to this offender, with a pitying compassion all the deeper 



LOVING AND KNOWING. 101 

because of this outrage, and fasten oar heart upon him 
anew ? 

Look upon your erring fellow-men ; go up to the height 
and heart of God and look upon them. Do you know how 
He feels, or is it hard for you to get that view and to gaze out 
with His eyes upon the perishing ? Does His heart quicken 
ours ? Are we in sympathy with Him ? Are the far wastes 
of earth and humanity a burden upon our souls ? Every day, 
before we think of our " daily bread," does this prayer rise 
in ever-growing importunity, " Thy kingdom come " ? 

Oh, we want more of Love, and so more of God, and God 
is in Christ. Will God in very deed dwell with men ? Hear 
His own lips in response, " Thus saith the high and lofty 
One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, I dwell 
in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a con- 
trite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble 
and to revive the hearts of the contrite ones." 



X. 

FOE A TIME OF AFFLICTION. 

CHRISTIAN SUBMISSION. 

" . . . . Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt. " — Matt. xxvi. 39. 

LOOKING through the gloom of the Garden Shades, and 
of deep midnight in Gethsemane, we discern in one 
group the dim outline of three human forms reclining to- 
gether in listless and dejected attitude, and lost in grief or 
sleep, or both. 

A little way from this group, about a stone's throw, is 
another solitary form, evidently wrestling with some great 
anguish. This we judge from his gestures and motions, and 
from the groans that seem like articulate throbs of agony. 
As we look the form goes down on its knees, as if for 
prayer, and the hands stretch themselves heavenward. But 
the tide is not yet at its height ; wave on wave surges over 
this strained and quivering spirit, and the form sinks lower, 
until it is prostrate on the ground, the face laid to the earth. 
Indistinctly we hear words — " this cup ! " " this cup, if it be 
possible, let it pass from me ! " We can not see any literal 
"cup," but we can understand what an expressive image 
this word is of some appointed grief. It is as though the 
hand held a cup, and into it were wrung, beneath our eyes, 
dark and bitter waters, drop by drop, drop by drop, more 
acrid, more pungent, more unendurable to the taste until it 



CHRISTIAN SUBMISSION. 103 

is fall — a potion to be drank. It must be lifted to the lips. 
It must be drained to the bitter dregs. So we feel and 
speak, when some great affliction, like the death of one 
tenderly beloved, warns us that its hour has come ; or when 
some sharp bat just retribution overtakes a fault or crime of 
long ago, — that's the cup forced into the hand, to be put to 
the mouth. And that prostrate form in the Garden makes 
mention of " a cup" It must be most bitterly mingled, if 
it be that which so crushes the very frame to the earth. We 
know it was bitterly mingled. There were gall and worm- 
wood in it. It held the concentrated bitterness of earth's 
sin and doom and woe. The wrath of God was in it. The 
finger of Justice stirred it. We know that prostrate form. 
We know what that sufferer essayed to drink. We do not 
marvel that the flesh fainted and failed. We only marvel 
at the constancy of His spirit, at this unequaled submission, 
when nature was already past its strength, " nevertheless " 
in pauses of the panting breath, " nevertheless " " not as I 
will, but as Thou wilt." 

The force of this struggling utterance is in that first word 
" nevertheless," and the key to interpret that word is this 
scene of the midnight in the Garden. 

True Filial Submission to the Divine Will after this 
example of Christ, is my theme. 

And it may be observed, in the First Place, that there 
is properly no Submission, except in the time of trial. 
There may be a submissive spirit, a readiness to submit, but 
the act can not be until the occasion be furnished. There 
must be a " nevertheless," a most powerful natural choice of 
the opposite, a pleading of inclination against some revealed 
appointment of God, before this grace of the Christian 



104 CHRISTIAN SUBMISSION. 

character can shine in its brightest lustre. The soul must 
first come into a strait where all its might of endurance is 
overtaxed, must hold in its hand a cup brimming with bitter 
elements, must send np this cry, forced out of its pangs, " If 
it be possible let this cup pass," before that great triumph of 
resignation which begins with such a " nevertheless" can be 
achieved. 

When summer days shine on us, — the sky without a cloud, 
earth without a tear, the soft breeze without a chill, our path 
without a Hint or a thorn, the plenteous harvest waving in 
our fields, all the tributaries of our comforts pouring full 
and free into our bosom, health blooming in our home, gain 
waiting on our industry, honor crowning our head, friend- 
ship faithful and warm, each grasp sincere, each smile 
flashed outward from the soul within, each comrade fond 
and true-hearted, — what is it then to say to all-favoring 
Providence, " as Thou wilt " % There is no "per contra" no 
negative, no " nevertheless "; the first clause, li not as I will " 
is wanting, or misplaced and impertinent, hollow and mean- 
ingless. " As Thou wilt i " But it is also as we would. 
Bounty streams upon us. Benefactions wait upon every 
want. No wish goes out and returns unfreighted. No de- 
sire is denied. There is no pinch. God wills as we will. 
The veriest worldling could look up and say, " I accept this 
Providential rule, I have no quarrel with the Supreme, I 
bless the Giver for these ceaseless gifts." Many an un- 
renewed man has such feelings at such times, and entertains 
them, and expresses them, and, in his own eyes, goes as far 
as any man in this fervor of a natural gratitude. But he 
must not call it "Resignation." Resigned to what? To 
the lavishing of the Great Father's goodness upon him ! No 



CHRISTIAN SUBMISSION. 105 

quarrel with a sovereignty which leaves him nothing to 
desire ! 

This is not Submission. There is no room for Submission, 
save in trial, — the contradiction of our choices, the setting 
aside of our will, and the resistless coming in of that Auto- 
cratic will, — to do its own pleasure with us and upon us. 
But for trial, then, this sweet and fragrant grace of the 
Christian spirit would never diffuse its odor along the rough 
paths of life. And that which assumes its name in Joy's 
bright hour, whether under a saintly or a worldly garb, is, 
so far, a name and nothing more. 

It may be observed, again, that this Submission is not a 
mere acquiescence in the Divine will. There is some danger 
that, in our trials, we stop short with a silent sufferance of 
God's pleasure. A heart whose self-devotion has never been 
slain may attain to this. It may reason thus : " God is too 
strong for me to contend with. He will govern according 
to His own counsels. What He pleases to take from me I 
can not withhold. What He determines to lay upon me I 
can not throw off. Resistance, Complaint, Fretf ulness, were 
of no avail. It is God ; what can I do but submit % " 

And even Christians may wear a type of Resignation which 
is altogether negative^ and never passes over into the posi- 
tive : which simply does not protest against what God ap^ 
points, yields the prize over which the two wills had held de- 
bate, lays aside its own choice under the sovereign interdict, 
and pauses there, as if the grace of Submission had its con- 
summate exercise. But this, again, is to adopt but one part 
of that self-sacrificing utterance that pierced the silent glcom 
of Gethsemane. Even as a selfish soul, glad of its comfort 
while Providence smiles, may say, " as Thou wilt" — and 
7 



106 CHRISTIAN SUBMISSION. 

omit the first clause, — so this acquiescing type of resignation 
says, " not as I will" and goes no further. This is not the 
•example of that garden sufferer. He gave up His own will, 
:and against all the instinctive protest of anguished nature 
He chose the will that put Him to grief. This is the ele- 
ment that must enter into a true Submission. Whether we 
know or not what God has ordained, whether our affliction 
be a present calamity or a fear only, we must prefer to 
have God's will done. It must be our free choice that after 
lie has heard and weighed our plea, and notwithstanding 
what naturally we crave, that that which pleases Him, rather 
than that which pleases us, should be the reigning statute 
of the hour. " Not my will, if it conflicts with Thine ; but 
Thine, though it crosses mine. Thine is so wise, so good, so 
infinitely more desirable, I choose it over nature and self. 
I desire relief, but more than freedom from suffering, most 
of all, I desire Thy blessed will to have its way." 

Again, it may be observed, the spirit of true Submission 
consents that we ash relief if it can he bestowed. Else our 
Submission were stoicism. It were a hard, frigid endur- 
ance, braced against suffering, — steeling the sinews to it, 
and stifling every moan. This were not pleasant in God's 
sight, nor healthful for our soul. The tender, confiding, 
filial Submission is of another sort. It will open its wounded 
heart to God. It will speak to Him with plaintive voice. 
It will assume that God's ordinances are not coldly des- 
potic, — but are the discipline of a Father. It will honor 
God as a Father, by asking of Him alleviation to our sor- 
row, if He see that it can f consistently with our healing, 
be afforded. 

God is not indifferent to our pain. Our burdened sighs 



CHRISTIAN SUBMISSION, 107 

make no music in His ear ; and when we ask Him to as- 
suage our sorrows, it is a testimony to His pitying kindness. 
Perhaps He can grant our petition. To have brought us 
thus to His feet, lowly suppliants, may have been the very 
object of His chastening, and our humble prayer may pave 
the way for His gracious interposition. It is not as though, 
we knew certainly what He had decreed, and were impor- 
tuning Him to reverse His own decision. " While the child 
was yet alive" — was David's self-vindication to his house- 
hold, — " I fasted and wept, for I said, who can tell whether 
God will be gracious to me, that the child may live." Even 
Jesus, in the anguish of His human soul, uncertain how far 
those sharp atoning rigors must be pushed, — while He ex- 
pressed His unqualified submission, " not as I will, but as 
Thou wilt " — prayed also, " if it be possible, let this cup pass 
from me ! " 

This, then, is the pattern of a true Christian Submission, 
which we are to carry through all the vicissitudes of life. 
This great trial of our suffering Saviour is to connect itself 
by dearest association as of a brother's example and fellow- 
ship with all our inferior trials, and teach us how to bear 
them, not sullenly and stiffly, not with dumb, powerless 
acquiescence, but with tender calls upon God, for His 
pity, and a victorious choice of His will over our own. 

How manifold is that discipline of the Divine hand that 
furnishes occasion for the exercise of this submissive spirit ! 
To one, God sends the loss of property. From ease and 
affluence, he and his are dropped into the lap of want ; a 
rough, harsh nurse for human frailty and dependence. Mute 
eyes, into which his eyes always smiled assurance of every fit 
indulgence, hang upon him for the comforts he can no longer 



108 CHRISTIAN SUBMISSION. 

supply. Every day, in his better fortunes, he used to pray> 
" Thy will be done in earth as in heaven ! " Will he pray 
it now ? His is not an exceptional experience. Many human 
feet walk that low narrow vale of poverty. Is he willing 
to walk there if God so appoint ? Can he stand there, 
quite at the bottom of the valley, empty-handed, — with his 
dependent ones clinging to him, — and lifting his eyes to the 
great and good Sovereign, say yet, — " Nevertheless, not as 
I will, but as Thou wilt ! " — " I have portion enough, when 
I have God only between me and extremities " ? If he can, 
then he illustrates the lowliness and patience of Christlike 
Submission. 

To another, God appoints the loss of health. He does 
not stand alone in life. There is a household group depend- 
ent on his industry. They fare well while he is able to 
toil. But he lies now, feeble and hollow-eyed, on his couch- 
What he had saved by his earnings in better days, is quickly 
consumed. He is not a producer any more, but a burden 
upon the family means. It looks dark ahead. There is no 
star of morning in his earthly sky. Come in, and stand by 
his bedside, and ask him, if he can leave himself and those 
dearer than self, cheerfully in God's hands. Ah, what a 
triumph of grace it will be, if he can look up steadfastly, 
and with this tender care weighing on his spirit, take from 
the lips of the Man of Sorrows this sustaining utterance, 
" Nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt ! " 

And one is misunderstood, misappreciated, misrepre- 
sented ; another is taxed as the price of a good conscience, 
with the alienation of friends and the scoff of foes, or 
is threatened with the loss of place and the frown of 
home ; another follows to the sick-chamber and then 



CHRISTIAN SUBMISSION. 109 

to the narrow house the dearest face and form of earth ; 
another follows to a deeper and sadder grave a dead hope, 
a scheme of life so beautiful and stately, and strews over 
its cold corse more withered leaves than Autumn flings 
earthward from all her woods : " nevertheless," — can we say 
it, under all these brooding clouds, — " not as I will, but as 
Thou wilt " ? 

Will you let Him appoint all your earthly lot ? Are you 
satisfied that He should arrange it as He pleases? When 
He says to you, " You have had pleasant and sparkling mixt- 
ures, — take now this bitter cup, because I will," — do you 
assent, " Yes, Lord, as Thou wilt " ? When He says, " You 
have been carefully and tenderly reared, and softly minis- 
tered unto, — come here now and grapple with rough, 
coarse need ! " — do you, even as you shrink from that rude 
contact, reply, " Nevertheless, as Thou wilt"? When He 
says — " Your feet are tender, are they ; come tread this 
flinty path," and you step where He leads, — can you say, 
looking up, in uncomplaining acquiescence, " My feet are 
bleeding, Father ; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou 
wilt " ? 

My dear friends, here is the true secret of contentment. 
Here is our insurance for stormy and troublous times, for 
dark days, whatever breadth of sky they shroud in gloom, 
for panics, reverses, and ebb-tide in all hope and toil. In 
the strength of this, we may go beyond the old Scripture 
formula, " Having food and raiment, let us therewith be 
content "; for we may say, deprived of all things, " Thy will 
be done ! " Nay, we may catch that most triumphant burst 
from an elder saint, oat of the ashes of utter desolation, 
" Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him." 



110 CHRISTIAN SUBMISSION. 

So, out of the gloom of the garden and the midnight, let 
a light shine along all our earthly paths, no matter how 
darkly shadowed ; and ever, in deepest anguish, let that 
prostrate form teach us, repeating after His quivering lips, 
to say, " Not as I will, but as Thou wilt ! " 

"Thy wiLn be done ! " In devious way 
The hurrying stream of life may run ; 
Yet still our grateful hearts shall say, 
"Thy will be done t" 

44 Thy wild be done ! " Tho' shrouded o'er 
Our path with gloom, one comfort, one 
Is ours : to breathe, while we adore, 
"Thy will be done!'' 



XL 

NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL. 

" But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for 
they are foolishness unto him ; neither can he know them, because they are 
spiritually discerned." — 1 Cor. ii. 14. 

IN this humanity of ours we have two natures, and we live 
a double life. One is of Sense, the other of Soul. In the 
one we see and hear and touch and handle with fleshly or- 
gans and instruments. The objects with which we thus be- 
come conversant are material objects. In the other, the 
faculties that perceive, inquire, search, and apprehend are 
spiritual organs, and their objects are qualities, truths, ideas. 
The two have their distinct and widely-contrasted means of 
growth and nourishment. One must be fed and clad and 
warmed and sheltered and comforted as a material being. 
The other feeds on knowledge, is sheltered by protection 
from fear and sorrow, warmed by love and sympathy, com- 
forted by hope. Their needs correspond accurately with 
these natural and spiritual appetencies. Their enjoyments 
range in the same contrasted spheres. Their alliances and 
distinctions are separated by even grander distances. One is 
brother of the clod and will presently crumble into dust. The 
other is a child of the Infinite, and its pulses of life will 
throb as long as the heart of God shall beat. As to the 
worth of these two natures, we need not undervalue the one to 
set forth the exalted and immeasurable price of the other. 



112 NA TURAL AND SPIRITUAL. 

The body is a piece of cunning and masterful workmanship, 
but it is of no liner, of no other clay than that which builds 
the frame of the beasts that perish. It has a higher dignity 
and grace by its erect and balanced attitude — its face look- 
ing heavenward, not earthward — and chiefly by its won- 
drous partnership with an indwelling intelligence. It is this 
which crowns Its brow with the regal diadem of thought, 
which wreathes its lips with the sweet grace of smiles, and 
veils its frame from head to foot with delicacy and refine- 
ment. This bond of union is the exaltation of the flesh. 
Its true honor is that it is a servant of the soul, an instru- 
ment and helper of the spiritual. This is that real manhood 
which is filial to God, made in the Divine image, a spark of 
immortal life, a flame to burn on when stars and suns are 
ashes. The one abides for a season, and then there is noth- 
ing of pain or pleasure that can affect it any more forever. 
The other has an undying capacity for joy and sorrow, and 
will have an experience of this or that as an eternal portion. 
Notwithstanding these strange diversities and these broad 
contrasts, there is between these two natures a close and 
lively sympathy. One can not droop and the other be un- 
affected. Whatever enters the domain of one to bless or 
injure, the other also, for the most part, counts it in like 
manner an enemy or a friend. And yet, in their fortunes 
and condition there is often the most wonderful contrast of 
all. The body may be poor as the poorest and humblest, 
be coarsely lodged, scantily fed, and draped in want, and 
the soul boast itself an heir of imperishable riches, revel in 
daily plenty, feast on joys that never satiate and that are 
inexhaustible, and look with glistening eyes upon a hope 



NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL. 113 

bright as a morning star, and as surely ushering in the glory 
and splendor of an unsetting day. 

Now, with some men the first and the lower nature, the 
life of sense, is all in all. The grand questions are those 
which the senses ask: "What shall I eat?" "What shall I 
drink ? " « Wherewithal shall I be clothed \ " Their plan- 
ning and toiling are for the coronation of these earthly 
desires, the improving the condition, and the hoarding for 
the comfort of the body. The body has its imperative 
need. There are in it a hunger and a thirst which will not 
be denied. But its relation is always that of a servant, and 
its care can never properly or wisely be a final end, as for 
its own sake ; but it is always to be regarded as a stepping- 
stone to a grander end — the highest welfare and the largest 
usefulness of the interior and nobler life. There are those 
•who become so absorbed in this material care that the other, 
with all that is involved in its problems, ceases to press 
their thoughts and engage their attention. It is exactly and 
literally true, that they live for the present. The changeful 
tides of joy and sorrow with them are the fluctuations of 
their earthly prosperity. The things that affect this interest 
are near and impressive objects of vision. They tower up 
as great mountains. The things that concern the other in- 
terest are dim, hazy, and far off. The one class of objects 
are clear and sharp to sight ; the other dreamy, shadowy, 
unreal to faith. Every appeal from this natural life that 
concerns its famishing and enriching finds the whole man- 
hood keen and sensitive. The appeals from that invisible 
sphere of being are so remote and subdued that the ear 
altogether fails to catch them. It becomes, in fact, with 
this devotee of the visible and the present well-nigh impos- 



114: NA TURAL A ND SPIRITUAL. 

sible to appreciate or understand the pressure which is 
sometimes urged upon him from that other hidden life* 
The objects of chief regard in that shadowy sphere are in- 
visible to him ; the matters at stake not among those he is 
pursuing as his most stimulating prizes; the questions held 
to be of such momentous consequence not the questions he 
is accustomed to raise. In this whole direction his percep- 
tions and his sensibilities are quite blind, dull, and para- 
lyzed, while on the other side he is most intensely alive and 
earnest. So that the natural man h'nds himself at length 
incapable of apprehending the things which are spiritually 
discerned. 

I am not speaking of the gross sensualist who has im- 
bruted his whole nature in the animal degradation of shame- 
less lusts, and who can hardly say whether there is anything 
in him that differs from the "spirit of a beast which goeth 
downward"; nor of the dullard who gazes vacantly about 
him and leers and winks, satisfied with food, and sleep, 
and idly basking in the sun ; but of the intelligent and acute 
man of the world, who devotes his intelligence and his 
acuteness wholly to the life that now is. The sphere of his 
living, and thinking, and feeling is that which bounds these 
earthly continents and oceans. The sky that bends over 
him is this canopy that gives him light for his day's work, 
and curtains the couch where his weariness reposes, await- 
ing thus its fresh anointing for to-morrow's task. He may 
be an intellectual man, and his daily labor may not be in the 
open iields of nature, nor upon the problems of trade, but 
in the h'elds of science, upon the problems of art, invention, 
and discovery. He recognizes, indeed, other forces than 
the muscles of the arm, other walks than those of the mar- 



NA TURAL AND SPIRITUAL. 115 

ket-place, the harvest plain, and the vineyard slope ; but 
still his world is Nature, his divinities those that sit en- 
throned in her mystic halls; he feeds the lamp of his devo- 
tion with earthly oil ; his proudest joy and richest reward 
are when he shouts aloud " Eureka ! " to his fellow-laborers 
through the dim laboratory of earthly science. Beyond the 
crystal walls that inclose the range of his studies all is emp- 
tiness or " foolishness." 

He may even be a humane man and a philanthropic man, 
and yet have no citizenship and no interest in the spiritual, 
his humanities and philanthropies taking as their burden 
and their care visible and sensible sufferings ; the pains that 
afflict the body ; the famine that consumes its strength ; the 
chill that creeps along its veins ; the servitude that bows its 
neck and exacts its sweat with stripes. The spiritual con- 
ditions and relations of this sufferer — the spiritual life, as 
related to himself and to every, other man— may still be a 
" terra incognita," an unknown land, amid whose dusky 
continents he never explores, and from which no arresting 
voices ever call to his hearing. 

What we say and what we wish to illustrate concerning 
this type of character is that it has cultivated the senses, and 
is quick and vital on the side of its being that looks toward 
the visible, the sensible, the present ; but the other faculties 
of discerning that look off upon invisible and eternal reali- 
ties lie dormant, torpid, and undeveloped. The material and 
all that directly affects it lie close to its understanding and 
its fountains of emotion. The spiritual can not be discerned 
nor comprehended. The life that is vital and intense in 
that direction and in regard to those interests is a mystery 
to this mind. The things that are natural are in clear, 



116 NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL. 

sunny, and sharp relief beneath his eye ; the things that 
are spiritual are hidden behind a veil through which no 
glance of his pierces. Naturally, gifted with most pene- 
trating eyesight ; spiritually, blind. 

Test him. Let this man look in upon one of the sacraments 
of the Church. There is a simple table spread with bread 
and wine only. But the covenanted ones hasten to be pres- 
ent. The aged and the infirm will not fail of this. The ranks, 
not always full, are full at this feast. There is a sweet and 
solemn hush upon the scene. A holy Sabbath calm, almost 
like the calm of that heavenly rest which shall never be 
broken, broods, as with visible dovelike wings, the assembly. 
There are evidently working in many hearts deep and 
strong emotions, w T hose tidal depths and currents stir all the 
soul. How little this observer can understand of this scene ! 
The absorbing interest, the intense still life pulsing through 
the silent throng. So silent are they that he might suppose 
them lost in slumber, only the attitude confutes that sup- 
position ; and in the eye, if he would gaze, eyes that are 
half-curtained by the drooping lids, he would discern such 
far-retreating vistas of rapt contemplation, as should con- 
vince him that the mind was never more busy and absorbed. 
But how mysterious it is to him ! There is certainly 
nothing very splendid in the entertainment. As an earthly 
banquet, he has often seen it surpassed. There are no dis- 
tinguished guests present as far as he discerns. It is only 
their family circle. What lends such an interest to the oc- 
casion ? What sweeps with such a wondrous touch the 
chords of their hearts? 

Ah, there is a presence there for which he has no vision ; 
there is an interest the tenderness and force of which are 



NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL. \\^ 

enigmas to him ; lie sees not the ranges their subdued yet 
rejoicing spirits are taking over the field of memory, and 
the far past of sacred history. As they withdraw themselves 
more and more from the senses, sitting as though they were 
present in the body, but absent in the Spirit, he sees not 
what steep adventurous flights faith makes up through the 
parting arch and within the golden gates, and out along the 
mighty avenues of Immortality. Simply that which is 
visible is what he reads and all that he reads. But the key 
to what is thought and felt is the invisible, the spiritual, 
and this is hidden from his gaze. 

Let him single out some faces of the crowd and inspect 
them more narrowly. There is one in which the tide of 
joy has risen to its full height, yet there is no overflow. 
It is like a stream full to the level of its banks, but keeping 
the channel still. The face is not laughing nor smiling. It 
is transfigured. As though a radiance from within, having 
filled the chambers of the soul with bright floods, were 
about to make the flesh translucent. What is the fountain 
of that radiance? What is the happy thought, the mute 
confession of which can not quite be suppressed ? Has any 
great piece of good fortune happened to this man? Is he 
thinking of the accumulation of earthly gains ? Is he an- 
ticipating a successful bargain to be closed to-morrow % 
How little can the observer know what sky is bending over 
that glad heart — what faces look out of it into his upward 
gaze, from what nether springs, which no frost can touch 
and which never know a drought, that joy is ever welling 
up ! 

There is another face that wears a distinct outward sig- 
nature. The calm is all broken up. There has been perhaps 



118 NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL. 

a struggle to maintain it. But some pent-up elemental forces 
have burst their bonds. The lines of the countenance are 
working. The tears are running quietly but copiously from 
under the brimming eyelids. The lip wears a strange min- 
gling of expression, as though compounded of a smile and 
a sigh. Now the emotion seems to subside, and now it 
surges up again as though a wave had retreated and then 
lifting its crest once more returned as with the whole great 
deep heaving with it. Our observer looks on. "What's 
the matter there ? " " Been bereaved perhaps ! " JS~o, 
that's not it. " Guilty of some great wrong then and his 
conscience troubles him." Well, he may possibly feel that 
he is a great offender, but before his fellow-men his es- 
cutcheon is stainless. "Some one has wounded and abused 
him — his feelings have been hurt ! " Ah, my friend, you 
don't understand it. That emotion must remain a mystery 
to you. It is not sad. It is one of the sweetest luxuries 
the soul can feel. There are such thoughts of the Saviour's 
goodness, of His gentleness and patience, of His interced- 
ing love and His victorious grace, there are such near mani- 
festations now of His presence — such a rising up of the whole 
soul to salute Him, and to lay its penitential and grateful 
offerings at His feet — such a bond, oh, such a bond of un- 
utterably tender and sacred friendship between those two, 
that the heart can no more keep its cool equanimity than 
the sea can keep down its tides when the orbs of heaven 
roll over it. 

This natural man may stand by, or sit or kneel when an 
earnest Christian prays. The nature of this service is obvi- 
ous enough. The outward demonstration is intelligible. 
There are closed eyes to shut out the world, there is the audible 



NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL. H9 

voice that other hearts may join in the utterance, there are 
reverent and affectionate names addressed to the unseen Je- 
hovah. But in what a spiritual world that ardent soul is 
moving, what other vision it is that looks up and looks out 
upon glorious realities, what a light shines round about it, 
what a blessed and conscious gravitation draws it toward 
that celestial center of its hopes and its joys, only one who 
has had experience of it can know or say. 

Two young men separate on the eve of the Church prayer- 
meeting. One is going to that meeting. ■ The other is about 
to make a call upon some pleasant family circle. He invites 
his comrade to call with him, and is rather surprised to find 
how strong is the attraction that draws him the other way. 
Is there any comparison between the pleasantness of the two % 
Can it be as interesting and delightful to sit down for a dull 
hour among solemn people who are prosing to one another 
about the love of God, or the attractions and the obligations 
of the Christian life, to vary the same only by droning 
through a prayer or singing a psalm-tune, as to meet the 
bright faces of that other circle, to chat with lively wits and 
graceful culture, to hear the most exquisite and passionate 
music, and to feel bathed in the refining and stimulating at- 
mosphere of an elegant home ? This one can not conceive 
that his friend can really prefer the other ; that it more de- 
lights, enriches, and elevates his whole being, and that his 
soul craves it and can not be persuaded to miss it. The real 
attractions there are only spiritually discerned. 

Carry to this natural man an appeal from a case of want. 
There is a family who have no bread, no fire, no proper 
shelter, no warm clothing, no profitable labor, no means but 
the idle strength of their unoccupied hands. That case 



120 NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL. 

touches his heart at once. His sensibilities are deeply 
stirred. He is moved to bestow without delay what relief 
he can. He would forego almost any personal gratification 
to put some better aspect upon the forlorn destitution of this 
wretched household. He thanks you for the opportunity 
and would do the like again. For he is a thoroughly hu- 
mane man. 

But lead up before him now another object of your care. 
He looks him over. What's the trouble here? Everything 
seems comfortable — a smiling face, the good things of this 
life in sufficient measure, hope, peace, plenty. What occa- 
sion for solicitude here % Well, you are not looking upon 
the outward man. But all is so dark and desolate within — - 
there is no care for the soul, no apparent consciousness of 
its immortality, no acquaintance with the Word of God, no 
prayer, no repenting, no clinging to Jesus. All this interior 
state may be true, perhaps, of the poor family just relieved. 
It is true of unnumbered families of our human kindred 
who are sitting in the darkness of spiritual night. They 
are famishing for want of the bread that comes down from 
heaven, athirst for the living water, unsheltered from the 
wrath of God, portionless for eternity. Why is not our 
generous friend excited over this destitution ? Is not this 
need as real as the other ? Is not the soul more precious 
than the mortal body ? Is it of first importance that 
the flesh be comforted, and a matter of no great moment 
or urgency that the spirit be brought to Christ for His great 
salvation? Oh, that these pitiful eyes, kindling and filling 
with such tenderness over the bodily wants, were opened as 
by a prophet and as by a touch divine, to look upon a 
parched and starving soul, upon the dreary way over which 



NA TURAL AND SPIRITUAL. 121 

it travels on, upon the blank desolation of its unprovided 
future, upon this one imperial, transcendent care that it be 
prepared to meet God in peace. But it does not see that. 
That is only spiritually discerned. 

So all words and ideas that relate to his own char- 
acter and prospects are interpreted by the natural man 
naturally, not spiritually. Honesty is a quality between 
man and man. It has no reference to the claims of God. 
"Fortunate" is an expression referring to earthly gain* 
"Rich and poor" exhaust their meaning within the limits 
of the earthly condition. Uprightness, integrity, fidelity, 
concern the principles of human intercourse — the discharge 
of trusts to which men only are parties, and not the state of 
the heart toward the great Supreme One. 

Oh, that othek life, above and beyond this, which runs 
parallel with it ; that other sky, stretching its grand cope 
above this little visible dome ; that Heaven of bliss, that 
world of woe, that God and Saviour and Sacrifice, that 
warning and all-preserving record, that day of final judg- 
ment, that dread and fact of retribution, that welcome and 
that sentence, " Come ! " " Depart ! " .Would, oh, would to 
God that all these blind eyes were opened, these deaf ears 
unstopped, these earth-bound spirits could part the cords of 
their bondage, and these dim shadows of the spiritual life 
become to every one of us near, solid, weighty, and all-con- 
trolling realities ! 

8 



XII. 

RELIGION AND NATURAL AFFECTIONS. 

"If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and 
children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my 
disciple." — Luke xiv. 26. 

WHO, then, can be saved ? Obedience to this strange 
and harsh demand does violence to the deepest and 
strongest sensibilities of our souls, the most controlling nur- 
ture of our whole life. This condition of diseipleship, if we 
must take it literally, is against the mighty voice of Nature. 
"Father" and "Mother" are sacred names. They are en. 
shrined in our heart of hearts. In childhood there is noth- 
ing beside on earth so near, so dear, and so venerated ; and 
in age we turn back to those well-remembered forms, with 
all that is tenderest and holiest in our affections clustering 
around them and clinging to them still. And who is the 
" wife " of our bosom, that we should come to hate her ? 
Have we taken her from all other shelter, within our encir- 
cling arms, and made our breast her home and pillow, only 
to spurn her away ? Our " children," can we forget whose 
life it is that veins their flesh, that mantles their cheeks, 
and looks out of their fond eyes into ours? "Brother" 
and " sister," our cradle-mates, twin buds with us on the 
parent stock, earliest confidants of our hearts, are they to 
be to us as strangers — nay, as foes? Hate our own life I 
But the strongest instinct the creating hand has implanted 



RELIGION AND NATURAL AFFECTIONS. 123 

in our being is the instinct of self-preservation. Crime, 
misery, and despair may cease to value life and long to bar- 
ter it away for coveted insensibility, but can any healthful 
mind despise and hate life? Can any dutiful spirit cast 
away such a trust ? 

And this Scripture demand is just a specimen requisition. 
There are others in other directions equally sweeping, revo- 
lutionary, and unnatural. The religions life imposes terms 
that seem to necessitate a radical subversion of our nature, 
the shattering of our original constitutional structure, and a 
reconstruction, with all our present sentiments, instincts, 
and propensities left out. A change of disposition is a 
credible conversion. To cease to do evil and learn to do 
well is a regeneration that is reasonable and practical. But 
to blot out the domestic affections; to ignore all the appeals 
of the natural ties ; to suppress the aspirations that seem to 
be the native wings of the soul, and to extinguish the tender 
sentiments that are the vital throbbings of the heart; to 
tread back into dust and nothingness the desires that spring 
from seeds of a Divine sowing, for elevation, advancement, 
knowledge, power, approbation, enjoyment — who can be 
born again by such an utter dissolution of his former self % 
This is to become " a new creature," in the sense of becom- 
ing constitutionally another creature, another style and sort 
of being, not in spirit, temper, and aim, but in the make of 
the soul, in the powers and forces of nature. This is irra- 
tional, we say ; impracticable, and all such exhortations fall 
idly to the ground. How can a man pull down the pillars 
of his being, change the whole model, set up the fallen 
columns and lift again the shattered dome by some new 
laws and to some new order of architecture ; or, if he could 



124: RELIGION AND NA TURAL AFFECTIONS, 

do that, retain through and beyond such a process any con- 
sciousness of identity ? 

I believe there is just here a real puzzle with many 
minds as to the conditions of Christian discipleship. The 
Gospel requisitions, they complain, are either unintelligible, 
or, if they mean what they seem to mean, they are beyond 
both human reason and human power. The protest which 
I have argued is on many a lip and in many a heart. The 
gateway of the religious life, if such be its inexorable limi- 
tations, must strip us of our proper manhood before ever 
we can pass through it. Then why are we furnished with 
such a manhood, or being so furnished, why are we required 
to relinquish it in order to be saved ? 

Now let us consider more carefully the requisitions thus 
arraigned, and see if they are open to the exceptions taken. 
We are to consider the relation of the Gospel requirements 
to our natural affections and sentiments. We may begin 
with the instance of our Scripture. Here, if anywhere, the 
objector feels that he stands on solid ground. He can not 
reasonably be required to trample these sacred natural affec- 
tions out of his soul. It were monstrous, inhuman, a fall 
even below instinctive brute tenderness, to turn with the 
rancor of hate against the bosom that nourished him, the 
arms that first sheltered him. How can the gentle Saviour, 
author and lover of humanity, insist upon that ? 

Consider, then, that this sentiment of hatred, whatever it 
shall prove to be, is the sentiment of a Christian heart. It 
is the state of mind which one is to cherish in coming to 
Christ, and which he is to continue to cherish as an accepted 
disciple. It can not, then, well be the unfilial and rancor- 
ous feeling which a willful and disobedient son visits upon a 



RELIGION AND NA TURAL AFFECTIONS. 125 

parent's head. It is not the violent reaction of a spirit 
curbed strongly from vice and excesses, and resenting and 
hating such bonds. It is not the spiteful bitterness of one 
whose boyhood has been kept under a bondage grievous to 
his corrupt inclinations, and who, in the strengthening of 
his muscles, and his passions, and his will, has risen up to 
beat down the control which has been enforced so long. It 
is, in none of the relations named in our Scripture, a willful 
and wanton desire to inflict injury or impose neglect and 
suffering on any flesh or sensibility of kindred life; for 
obviously none of these states of mind can characterize the 
spirit of the contrite sinner who is seeking Jesus. It is a 
sentiment which that weeping penitent may retain at the 
moment he is pleading, " Wash me thoroughly from mine 
iniquity and cleanse me from my sin." This fact must 
stamp it as something very different from a piece of injus- 
tice, cruelty, and hard-heartedness, against which Nature 
herself cries out, and start the conviction that it is a state of 
the affections produced by some relation of those natural 
ties to the claims and person of Jesus, and somehow con- 
sistent with the utmost tenderness and humanity. 

This suggestion receives force from the varying language 
of Luke and of Matthew upon the point we have before us. 
With the latter the interdict runs, u He that loveth father or 
mother more than m.e, is not worthy of me." It is evident 
here that the natural ties are brought into comparison merely 
with the claims of Jesus. It is not required in this view to 
hate father and mother. They may be loved. They may 
be loved fondly and tenderly. But there is another whose 
claim is higher and holier, who must be loved supremely* 
must be the first choice of the heart, must carry the affec- 



126 RELIGION AND NA TURAL AFFECTIONS. 

tions above all other objects of endearment. If He be 
sought with an offer of love less in intensity and degree than 
that which is bestowed upon our fleshly kindred, He Him- 
self is put below them ; they are honored with a higher place, 
and a stronger attachment than that of which He is deemed 
worthy ; and such an offer, because it misplaces, misappreci- 
ates and dishonors Him, He will not accept. The wooing 
which is worthy of Him, the only homage of the heart to 
which He will give Himself, must offer a higher and warmer 
love than that which we lay even at the parental feet. And 
to this we consent. This language of Matthew does not 
offend us. It does exalt Jesus. It puts a glorious crown 
on His head. It allows Him to stand amid the tenderest re- 
lations of life, to lay His hand upon the circle of household 
affections and say as of His right, " I must be loved more 
than these." But it does not forbid the human love and 
turn it to hate. 

Now, if Matthew speaks of these earthly friends as com- 
pared with Christ, and so urges comparative degrees of af- 
fection, why can we not understand that Luke speaks of 
the same members of the household as opposed to Christ 
and so enjoins another sentiment ? Then the hating means 
more than a comparative and inferior style of loving. 
It recognizes these human kindred not as inferior in just 
claims and willing attractiveness to the Lord Jesus, but as 
antagonistic to Him, as rivals that seek to absorb our affec- 
tion, as tempters luring the loving homage of the soul from 
Him to whom it is due. If even a father or a mother come 
in between our soul and Christ, if they would dissuade us 
from going to Jesus, if they hinder our prayers and our 
devotion, if they lay their commands upon us that we re- 



RELIGION AND NA TURAL AFFECTIONS. 127 

frain from the service of Christ, and bid us by all the sacred 
authority of their name, blaspheme that other holier name, 
we are to forget in that that they are our parents, to 
look upon them as enemies of our Lord, as sinfully blocking 
our way to His feet, as selfishly and wickedly monopolizing 
and controlling our affections, and to address them as the 
Saviour addressed that disciple foremost in zeal and ardor, 
as though his name and discipleship were utterly for- 
gotten, and all such tender expressions as the intercourse of 
years had witnessed between them were retracted for the 
stern and sharp rebuke, " Get thee behind me, Satan." The 
beloved of the family, if they hold us back from our ador- 
able friend and Lord, the master of our heart, are to be treated 
as any other obstacle that hinders our approach to those wait- 
ing arms. Such obstacles we are to spurn from our path. 
Whatever hands cling to us to detaiu us when Jesus calls, 
we are to strike down from us, to unclasp their hold though 
they were the hands which our infant palm first touched, 
which first led our tottering steps. 

Whatever interpose to keep us from a disciple's love and 
duty is sinful. Sin must be hated. The sins that separate 
us from those wounded feet, our souls have a right to hate, 
ought to hate. We do hate them when we have a disciple's 
affection. A father may ambitiously and sinfully seek to con- 
strain his child. A mother may make her own vanity and 
pride in a daughter the object of her regard instead of the 
•union of that dear one to the heavenly wooer ; and in this, 
father and mother are verily guilty and the filial spirit must 
resist this unrighteous interposition and by whatever needed 
force break from these detaining bonds. 
i The hate, then, which is thus felt is not exercised as 



128 RELIGION AND NA TURAL AFFECTIONS. 

toward a father or a mother. It is not the father that 
is hated. It is not the mother whom we repel. It 
is the tempter, the evil art and influence, that draws us 
away from the One altogether lovely. The fact that these 
mislead ers are the parents of our being can not override or 
palliate that other fact that they contend against the plead- 
ing voice of Christ. Their sin is the more heinous, their 
interposition the more criminal and unnatural, that they 
take advantage of a relationship so persuasive and influen- 
tial to lure us from the only Saviour, to magnify their word 
above His who gave us life and then gave His own to re- 
deem us from eternal death. If they insist that our love 
for them is to be the paramount sentiment of our souls, that 
we can not give our hearts to Jesus because of their more 
sacred claim, they are not wisely urging a parent's preroga- 
tive, they are setting themselves up as imperious rivals of 
the one only Being who has the right to say, " Thou shalt 
]ove the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and mind 
and strength"; and such impiety, so dishonorable to our 
sovereign Lord, so detrimental to our spiritual fortunes, it is 
right for us to hate. What if there were one in earthly 
relations upon whom we sought to bestow our heart, who 
was every way worthy of our love and trust, and another, 
say even a sister or a mother, laid plans so to detain and ab- 
sorb our affection, so to divert our homage, that we could 
carry no offering of our entire affection to that chosen one, 
how should we be likely to feel about such selfish interfer- 
ence ? Nay more, what if our affections were already 
pledged, sacred vows had been exchanged and we were no 
longer free to withhold or direct our hearts, and against 
.this rightful claim, the first upon our soul which any human 



RELIGION AND NA TURAL AFFECTIONS. 129 

name could possess, some household voice were to plead its 
own demand and seek to separate spirits so covenanted, it 
would not be strange if our souls should gird themselves to 
resist this voice and with whatever emphatic needed firm- 
ness and positiveness, to contend against it, and we might use 
Btrong and conclusive language in such protest. But our 
hearts do belong to Christ. His claim is righteous and su- 
preme. Then our first duty and tenderness, the fullest and 
sweetest services of our love are to be paid. Any opposing 
force, any hitherto exclusive monopolizing of our heart, 
seeking still to retain their supremacy, are wronging us and 
our Master ; and dropping the tender titles by which we 
used to call them, we may bid them, as perilous foes to our 
eternal peace, " avauntfrom our sight" "get behind us" 

If this be hating them, it is not a monstrous and unnatu* 
ral sentiment. It is they who are acting an unnatural part, 
and are to be treated, not as friends, but as enemies — ours 
and Christ's. 

There is another key to this passage, by the aid of which 
we may discriminate as to its proper significance. It is 
found in the clause, " and his own life also." " His own." 
It is the autocratic claim which is to be denied and put 
down. The natural heart pleads " Life — this life which beats 
in my heart, pulses in my veins, and permeates brain and 
frame, is mine. It is my own inalienable possession. It is 
mine to use, mine to enjoy, mine to enrich, mine to lavish. 
When any one threatens it, he threatens what is mine. When 
any one lays a finger upon it, he assails what is mine. Oh, 
how dear a treasure ! Let me guard it, let me be jealous for 
it, let me endow it and replenish it with good, all for my 
own gratification and happiness." It is the love of our own 



130 RELIGION AND NA TURAL AFFECTIONS. 

in our being that puts such a price upon it in oar eyes." 
Life is sacred and precious because it is the citadel of our 
conscious self. When we feel and when we say in this spirit, 
our own life, we build the dreadful throne of self -idolatry ; 
we have crowned and sceptered a rival to Jehovah ; we have 
installed in castled security a Lord and Master of our being 
to whom all our powers and all our activities are to pay trib- 
ute, and that sole potentate is Self. This is the sentiment 
we are to quarrel with and hate and banish. We are to re- 
nounce our own selfish appropriation of life's vigor and 
glory and joy. It is instinctive to love life and to preserve 
it. But in our character as intellectual and moral being3 
we are to rise higher than the instincts. Life is not our own. 
Its uses, its forces, its joys are not treasures of ours. We 
are not our own. We belong, by creation, preservation, and 
costly purchase, to God. Life, in its power of thought, in 
the ranges of the intellect ; Life, in the strength of its 
deathless affections and the going forth of the heart ; Life, 
in the lordly will asserting its sovereign choices, in the tender 
sensibilities, the gushing sympathies, the command of sight 
and sense and speech and motion, the gathering unto it out 
of all the elements of earth's goodly levies, is not ours, but 
His who made us and bought us. This self-assertion, when 
we say "my own life" contradicts that Divine testimony, 
"Ye are not your own ! " This usurping, autocratic setting 
up of Self is what we are to hate. He who would be a dis- 
ciple must not, indeed, despise the boon of existence or dis- 
parage the processes by which his earthly life is nourished 
and made strong, and madly cast that life to destruction, but 
his own — that element of self-investment in life — his own 
life, as arrogating and appropriating its beauty and its revenue 



RELIGION AND NA TURAL AFFECTIONS. 131 

to himself, lie may and must hate if he come fully and com- 
pletely to Jesus. 

This, then, is the word and the thought that are to be 
transferred to those relations so near to our identity. It is 
not hostility to a father and malignant feelings toward a 
mother which the young disciple is to cherish, but his own 
supreme claim to those parental ministrations which he is 
to abandon, renounce, and forswear for Christ's sake. What 
is a father and what is a mother to him ? Not beings over 
whose unfathomable fountains of natural tenderness he sits 
absorbed and wondering, as at some surpassing marvel of 
the Divine wisdom and goodness. It is as a source of 
comfort and kindness to him, as counselors in his ignorance^ 
helpers in his weakness, comforters in his sorrow, protectors 
in his danger, guardians of all his imperiled interests and 
hopes, he prizes them. He calls them his as they wait upon 
him, make him more secure, more furnished, more happy. 
He sits thus as himself the final end of all this contribution 
to his growth, convenience, and enjoyment. Now, if he be- 
come a disciple, this style of gathering tribute is to cease. 
He is no more to call even father and mother by exclusive 
title his. He has no longer exclusive rights and personal 
possessions. The selfish investment in the dear ties of his 
being he is to cast away, to hate that word by which with an 
odious emphasis he has spoken of his father and his mother, 
his children and friends, and to make war upon all this 
self-indulgence and self-gratification in life's sweet alliances. 
Surely this is right. It is not mysterious. It is not mon- 
strous. It is not unnatural in the highest and best concep- 
tion of Nature's bounds. It is the dethroning of self, the 
abdication of personal dominion, making our will in Christ's 



132 RELIGION AND NATURAL AFFECTIONS, 

favor, giving over all to Him, and turning the full current 
of our soul's opposition and antagonism against the old cun- 
ning idolatry which made Nature's plea supreme with us. 
It is only carrying out in this particular department of the 
natural affections the universal, unchanging demand, "If 
any man will be my disciple, let him deny himself, take up 
Jiis cross, and follow me." 

Meanwhile this demand, thus understood, provides for 
the proper and even the highest exercise of the natural af- 
fections. What we surrender as ours we receive back as 
precious trusts from our Lord. His name is written upon 
them. His approving sanction, adjusting anew the relation, 
makes it dearer and stronger than ever. Life is more sacred 
and eventful, its golden moments are of infinitely higher 
worth, because it is our day of work for the great Master 
whom we love. We love it, cherish it, and lavish it for its 
new uses with a recognition of its alliance with His glory 
and the unfading joys of ransomed souls. Our kindred are 
loved in Him. The whole investment, including the be- 
loved objects and the heart's tenderness for them, is trans- 
ferred to Him. Our own separate right and interest there 
being discarded, we look only upon these household forms 
as reflections of His goodness, channels of His beneficence 
to us, strands by which our life, as consecrated to Jesus, is 
braided into the life of humanity, and may hallow, serve, 
and enrich the influences and history of our time. 



XIII 

ADMINISTEKING EEBUKE. 

" Faithful are the wounds of a friend "— Pboy. xxvii. 6, 

THE surgeon's knife draws blood ; but it is a friendly 
hand that holds it. It cuts out the cancer eating its 
way to the vitals. It removes the shattered limb which 
Nature could not heal ; which would have dragged the whole 
body with it into the grave. 

Faithful Rebuke makes the mental nerves quiver, wrings 
the spirit, sometimes causes the heart to bleed ; but its object 
is to slay, not us, but our faults ; to divide off from us un- 
wholesome practices, to heal by dismemberment. 

But, as not every surgeon is skillful or careful, some 
marring nature more than mending, so they who administer 
rebuke sometimes wound without healing. 

It is a most difficult thing to do well. Few social or 
Christian duties are more delicate and trying, demand a finer 
skill, or exact more grace in the performer. 

Not every coarse spirit who hastens to the offender under 
a resolve to " free his mind," determined to let him know 
" what one man thinks of him," testifying to all concerned 
that he is not afraid " to speak out," and " to call things by 
their right names," is fit for the work upon which he ad- 
ventures. And yet it is a duty that must often be discharged. 
In very many relations of life we are challenged in all honor 



134 ADMINISTERING REBUKE. 

and fidelity to its performance. As fellow- Christians it is 
implied in our covenants with one another. And special 
considerations in a given case make it imperative with us 
personally. 

It is, then, a question of great practical moment, How 
Rebuke is to be administered f 

To discuss this question fairly and intelligently, we need 
to conceive distinctly at the outset the proper object of ad~ 
ministering Rebuke. Certainly that object is not to vent 
spite, to drive home a barbed arrow to the heart of the tres- 
passer, to feed old grudges, to triumph in the confusion and 
mortification of a rival, to indulge any ungenerous sentiment 
or malicious feeling. It may be sometimes the vindication 
of a cause or person maligned. It may be the answer of 
one wrongfully set upon, in self-defense against his persecu- 
tor. As we have to do with it in the relation of brethren and 
friends, it will be with us, for the most part, the self convic- 
tion and reformation of the offender. The instances are not 
many in our common life, certainly very few in our inter- 
course as fellow-disciples, in which we are called upon to 
undertake the severities and fidelities of Rebuke for any 
other leading object than that of the good of the patient. 

Let me say, then, as my first practical point, that Rebuke 
should seldom be administered in immediate connection with 
the offense. The reprover is seldom in a proper frame of mind 
then to bestow the reproof. The oifender is seldom in a proper 
state to receive it. The circumstances are seldom favorable 
to a happy effect. Both minds, all the minds interested, will 
most likely have distorted and one-sided views of the merits 
of the case. Time is needed for the calmness and composure 
that shall clarify the judgment, the subsidence of emotion 



ADMINISTERING REBUKE. 135 

that shall rectify the feelings, that recovery of the self-guard 
which shall wisely control the tongue. On one of those 
days in domestic life in which, perhaps, from the pressure of 
the special labor assigned to it, everybody's temper is crisp 
and short, there is a slight jar between mistress and servant. 
The part of the mansion occupied by the mistress has not 
received on this morning its usual share of attention, or the 
midday meal is badly served, or some little one strolls into 
peril or mischief, un watched of its appointed guardian. The 
lady calls the servant to account. The servant appears, 
flushed with the severe toil of the morning, with the un- 
welcome interruption of the routine duties, with the hasty 
summons to answer for misdemeanors. The cause of com- 
plaint is laid before her. Her voice in reply is not soft and 
temperate. In both language and manner she fails of a proper 
respect. The lady can not put up with insolence and 
passion. She must assert her dignity and authority. If she 
can not otherwise check the unruly spirit she*has raised, she 
must issue her edict of banishment. It is promptly accepted. 
And silence, desertion, and the annoyance of a new enlist- 
ment succeed the storm. That was not the time to call the 
neglecter to account. Her blood was in too rapid circulation; 
the sea of excitement within her too billowy and cre&ted — - 
a northeast gale blowing over it. Words of chiding, added 
to the pressure of the day's tax, would be more than she 
could bear. Had the thing been passed without notice 
then, and on the morrow, or the day following, when the 
fever had gone down, and the pulses were calm and the 
temper cool, and the general aspect of the domestic re- 
gions tidy and pleasant, the lady had brought forward the 
delinquency that had given her trouble, she would have won 
her victory gracefully, easily, and with beneficent results. 



136 ADMINISTERING REBUKE. 

Sometimes higher up in the domestic sphere there comes 
a day when the sky is sombre and the spirit in sympathy 
with it. Some unlovely temper seems to have taken pos- 
session of some youthful bosom there, — a son's or a daugh- 
ter's. A word of parental advice volunteered upon any not 
very grave matter, the costume for the day, a project for 
the evening, an outfit for a walk or ride, the occupation of 
the hour, delay in preparing for some stage of the day's 
progress that approaches with the next chime of the clock, 
falls upon the heart of the listener like a drop of water in 
boiling fat. The restiveness of the spirit expresses itself in 
lowering looks, or a gesture of impatience, or impetuous 
locomotion, or perhaps in most undutiful words. The whole 
of it is a most undutiful demonstration. Your suggestion 
was wise and prudent ; if it were not, it was well-intended, 
prompted by affectionate carefulness and tender good-will. 
Though it were unwelcome, judged needless, particularly 
annoying, it should have been received with respect and 
deference. Your first emotion at the excitement produced 
is perhaps one of surprise. You had no thought of kindling 
such a heat. You can not suppress an exclamation of aston- 
ishment. That is still more unfortunate. For when one is 
losing self-command nothing completes the disaster more 
surely than to have it said, " You are getting angry ! " The 
red heat is becoming white there. Your parental honor is 
now at hazard. You can not acquiesce in being so imperi- 
ously set aside. You can not pass over the offence unno- 
ticed. All subordination is at an end, if things go on so. 
You feel that you must assert yourself at once, before the 
matter go further, and deal with that perversity on the spot. 
Had you not better wait ? If the rebuke you are about 



ADMINISTERING REBUKE, 137 

to administer is just the thing, well conceived and calculated 
to do good, it will keep. The stomach of the patient is too 
irritable to take the close just now. Perhaps you might not 
Weigh it out with a steady hand. As to the assertion of 
dignity, there is peril of some loss of dignity in having a 
scene. Silence and reserve are wonderfully conservative of 
dignity. Your dignity does not rest upon a very solid foun- 
dation, if against such a breeze you must stretch out your 
hand so nervously to bolster it up. The morrow dawns, and 
the clouds have cleared away. The sun shines. Rebellion 
has put off its cloudy look. Smiles play where there were 
shadows yesterday. Watch now your opportunity. In the 
calmest hour of this serene weather lay your hand gently oh 
that other younger hand. With loving seriousness look 
upon the eyes that are already cast down and veiled with 
drooping lids, and say all that is in your heart. The guilt 
and danger of cherishing such feelings as those which gave 
you so much pain you may faithfully show. You have the 
beloved offender at advantage. Conscience has already been 
at work before you. Your own feelings appear all the 
deeper and stronger, because they have kept themselves 
alive till another sun arose. Your first forbearance is now 
appreciated, seen not to be a weakness, to carry in it no- 
promise of final impunity, consistent with the most settled 
purpose, and noble in its self-control and kindly generosity. 
]STow the tears start on those drooping lashes, and humble 
words give the utterance of an humble spirit, — " I was very 
wrong." The rebuke sinks down deep in the heart, never 
to be forgotten, and you have won your child. Certainly 
this is better than to have fought the battle out the preceding 

day. You would have conquered, but not in the same 
9 



138 ADMINISTERING REBUKE. 

way, not with the same weapons, not with the same subdu- 
ing effect upon that disloyal temper. A resentful memory 
would have hung over the battle-field like a sulphurous 
cloud as often as those young eyes looked back. I am not 
saying that you should yield, at the time, the point origi- 
nally in debate. It may be very important, for manifold 
reasons, that your suggestions should be made instantly im- 
perative. But you can do that without trying the case as 
one of filial disrespect. You can say calmly, " It must be 
as I wish, my child ! " and yet not utter one word of re- 
proof. The great secret of administering rebuke wisely and 
impressively in most instances, lies very much in this one 
simple precaution of Time, it includes so much more than 
mere waiting. 

There are, doubtless, cases where the Rebuke must be im- 
mediate or not at all, or not effective. You hear some good 
name maligned by foul or bitter lips, or some good cause 
berated indecently by a bold-faced Calumuiator, who seems 
to think he can look down all protest with cool and brazen 
impudence. You are not likely to meet him again ; at least 
not in the presence to whose ears his slanders are mouthed. 
You are greatly pained that such representations should go 
forth uncontradicted and such malicious injustice carry it 
off with a high hand. You feel competent to silence the 
Defamer, to turn the tables upon him, to expose the mean- 
ness of his motives, and to vindicate the character which has 
been assailed. It may be worth while to do it. And yet 
you may have more than once in your life repented that 
you did not bottle up your indignation and your eloquence. 
Still, if you judge it well to speak, take a glass of ice- water 
first, then do your work thoroughly, dissecting your subject 



ADMINISTERING REBUKE. 139 

till no Anatomy can put him together again — as he was 
tefore. 

I offer another practical suggestion ; Rebuke should sel- 
dom be administered in the presence of others. The illus- 
tration just given will perhaps serve to indicate a class of 
exceptions to this remark. But in most cases, when we 
deliver our admonition in the hearing of third parties, we 
bring two distracting forces to bear upon the mind of the 
culprit — the sense of mortification, and the stress of the 
uttered reproof. The mind is not free to listen profitably 
to what we have to say, when it is called off to weigh con- 
tinually the effect of our words upon the judgment of the 
bystanders. It will arm itself against conviction and con- 
cession, so long as there are lookers-on. It will feel resentful 
toward us for mistiming our rebuke so grossly, and inflict- 
ing the needless pain of its publicity. It will regard itself 
•as in some sense challenged to self- vindication, though in 
the wrong, by the very fact that we have so inconsiderately 
created a kind of tribunal, before which we have put the 
defendant on trial. While so aggrieved and offended at our 
want of delicacy — to make the best of it — if not our m- 
difference to its sensitiveness, it is in no state to receive our 
admonition favorably, lay it to heart and profit by it. 
Rather go with the offender into solitude ; let no other ear 
catch a syllable of what you say ; let there be no eye but 
yours on the changes of his countenance, and you have 
reconciled him to the circumstances in which you address 
him, and are almost sure, so far, of a candid and patient 
hearing. This caution is salutary for domestic life as well 
as social. Unless there is some greater good to be gained by 
producing a common impression, the parent will do well to 



140 ADMINISTERING REBUKE. 

give his chidings in secret, and in all ordinary cases, one 
servant should never be blamed in the presence of another. 

Again, Rebuke should never he administered in Anger. 
It is likely, if dictated by wounded and heated feeling, to 
be excessive in some direction. The judgment is not cool, 
so not clear ; and the proper measure of blame can not be 
fairly estimated. It loses force as rebuke by taking upon 
itself the color of passion. It is no longer calm and weighty 
as a judicial sentence, or tender and fervid as the plea of 
weeping affection ; it is rough with tempestuous energy ; it 
assumes an aspect of self-avenging, and excites in return 
only feelings of its own kind. That parental authority 
that expresses itself in furious demonstrations, sharp voices 
that almost literally " take the ears off," a rush and a grasp, 
or a push and a blow, dethrones itself in the very act of its 
assertion. It ceases to be sacred. It reposes no longer upon 
the undeniable prerogative of nature, or the sanction of- 
Divine Law. Its effect is not penitence and reformation, 
but only the palsy of fear. Self-control is, next to Justice, 
the kingliest attribute in all penal administration. And no 
rebuke, in any relation, that of friends and brethren, is 
weighty or useful, that fails in this infirmity of temper* 
Be sure of yourself before you set out upon such an errand ; 
and if there be the least leaven of personal unkindness in 
your heart ; if secretly, your meaning is to open a channel 
for all your pent bile, if you say aloud to your own outward 
ear, " It is my Christian duty, and I must not shrink," and 
very softly to your inward self — " I will give him what he 
deserves this time" — you are going in a bad spirit to do an 
evil work 

Again, Rebuke should not be given in sharp and hiting 



ADMINISTERING REBUKE. 141 

speech. Scarce any weaponry of wounding rankles like a 
word. The thoughts return to it, and repeat it over and 
over, and brood it with a cherishing and bitter memory. 
He who can say all that is in his heart, by w T ay of reproof 
without using offensive words, has learned one secret of re- 
buking both faithfully and profitably. We can bear almost 
any reach of faithful severity in chiding, if only the man- 
ner and the language do not wound. Rebuke must often 
be severe in matter ; the offense may be very serious and. 
grave, fidelity and honesty may demand very plain and 
pungent dealing; but the more this is true, the more care- 
ful should we be of our manner and our words. The most 
trying reproof should obviously be the most considerate, 
delicate, and tender in the vehicle which conveys it. As 
a general rule only the severity of matter belongs right- 
fully to a proper rebuke. To superadd to this a gratuitous 
severity of manner, a curling lip, a loud and excited voice, 
and a scorching severity of language, is a misuse of the 
ministry of Rebuke and an injury to the culprit for which it 
is scarce possible to atone. The spirit of the rebuker will 
be itself powerfully wrought upon by the dialect he em- 
ploys. His language will react upon himself with a force 
he can not resist. Let him suffer an abusive epithet to 
escape from his lips, and something else goes with it. He 
can not avoid, in the same opening of the gate, the emission 
of the sentiment that suits the word. He kindles himself 
into flame by these air-vents. And then he wins no con- 
quests, subdues no trespasses, restores no slackening friend- 
ship ; only drives the wedge of separation deeper, and 
leaves behind tones and words that make the ears to tingle 
and the heart to turn, as often as their sound repeats itself 



142 ADMINISTERING REBUKE. 

in memory. For such use, the simplest language is the 
best, with no covert innuendoes lurking in its significance, 
no satirical edge to it, no sting sheathed within it to thrust 
out its slender and poisoned spear into the soul. Say, in a 
straightforward, plain and manly way, what rests upon our 
mind, more subdued in manner, and more chastened in 
speech, as we approach the weightiest charge of all, and 
leave only the tender pressure of our deep sorrow for the 
wrong upon the guilty spirit. 

This Sorrow over the wrong is one chief element in a 
faithful and profitable rebuke. The rebuker must separate 
between the wrong and the wrong-doer. Toward the one 
he can entertain only aversion ; toward the other, only the 
sincerest loving-kindness. He must show that while he 
sees clearly the evil which has been committed, and his soul 
rises up in abhorrence of it, if it demand so strong a feel- 
ing, he keeps his affection for the criminal. It must be the 
wrong for which he visits, not a resentment against the cul- 
prit. In this way personal alienations will be avoided. It 
is not, in such case, a personal offense that has brought the 
reprover out to demand a reckoning ; it is not that he is 
animated by a sense of the injury, as against his own rights 
and interests ; it is not that feeling within him has become 
exasperated ; it is, it must be, a concern for the evil as 
evil, a grief at the going astray, a protest of purity, truth, 
integrity, and honor against that which undermines and 
sweeps them all away. 

Finally, Rebuke must always be administered in Love. 
This has been already more than once implied. If love be 
the soul of every rebuke, the outward expression will cor- 
respond. Whoever sets out in a spirit of good-will to recall 
an erring brother or regain a perverse and alienated friend, 



ADMINISTERING REBUKE. 143 

by dealing faithfully with his fault, will deal considerately 
and tenderly. We shall think of him as unhappy because 
he is guilty, or more to be pitied still if hardened. We 
shall feel for the suffering we are about to inflict upon him ; 
we shall long for his restoration to the lost path of rectitude 
and peace. If we go to him with fierce look, as if about to 
challenge him to mortal combat, we only move or incite 
him to put on his harness and take his place in the lists. 
But kindness disarms him of his war panoply. He will 
meet us as we meet him. Our spirit and manner will be 
contagious. Love is mightier to subdue than sword and 
battle-axe. My brother, seest thou a fellow-Christian stain- 
ing the ermined robe of discipieship ? Is thy zeal quick- 
ened to undertake with him ? Art thou resolute to cross 
his path % Take care ! Is not thy spirit hot within thee ? 
Dost thou not mean chastisement rather than chastening? 
Search thy heart ! Analyze thy zeal ! Are thy lips yet 
made tremulous with the intensity of love ? In these rela- 
tions of the Christian household the office of mutual fidelity 
is provided for in our covenants and made sacredly binding. 
We must give, we must receive, faithful reproof. Remem- 
ber, then, on these errands, to take soft words with you, 
my brother. Go in love. The sunbeams melt the frozen 
fountains, which the cold winter blasts only hide beneath a 
thicker rime. Examine closely, with great self-distrust, the 
spirit that leads you on. Ask for a special baptism of the 
dews of grace and meekness. Seeking to extract the mote 
from thy brother's eye, remember the beam that may be in 
thine own. Destroy not the whole power of your rebuke 
by some incidental harshness or injustice that shall mix 
itself subtly in. If you must wound in any of these rela- 
tions of life, let it be the wound of " a friend ! " 



XIV. 
STEONG m THE LOED. 

■ " Finall}^ my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of H13 
might."— Eph. vi. 10. 

THIS exhortation comes most fittingly in its place. The 
Apostle had been marshaling before the eyes of his 
brethren at Ephesus the long array of personal duties they 
were to undertake as disciples of Jesus. The tasks they were 
thus called upon to assume seem well-nigh innumerable. 
They come thronging up from the ranges of the whole 
changeful experience. There must have been in such a re- 
cital a keen trial to faith, and hope, and courage. It were 
no wonder that the Ephesian Christians should feel weak 
and dismayed before this formidable summary. And that 
was the time and place to add this stirring and cheering 
call ; to close up, for them, and for us who read after them, 
the same crowded catalogue of personal obligations, by lift- 
ing the desponding eye to the availing source of succor and 
strength. 

I. The first note of this call finds a response in the uni- 
versal human heart. "Be strong !" Yes, we all want 
that. We like to be able to do and to endure, to be victo- 
rious in our activities ; and impregnable in our defenses. 
We live in a world of aafifressive human selfishness. We 

fro 

wish to be capable of maintaining our rights. We are en- 
gaged in sharp competitions. It is an earnest question with 



STRONG IN THE LORD. 145 

lis how we may hold our own and win success. We see 
our fellow-men overborne by unexpected reverses ; by the 
faltering of their own counsels and endeavors ; by changes 
in the methods of the world's progress ; by a strain upon 
their vigor of body and mind, a pressure upon principle, 
virtue, and character, with which they could not cope. We 
need to be trained well ; to put on a stalwart manhood ; 
to be thoroughly fortified against this various stress of life. 
Peer into the mist as keenly as we will, we can not tell 
what is ahead. " To-morrow shall be as this day, and much 
more abundant." Perhaps ! and within that " perhaps " 
there are all manner of disastrous possibilities. That is a 
veil we can not lift. Beneath the fair and level horizon, 
unseen now, dark clouds may be drifting up with the tem- 
pest in them. To-day we float with the current ; what if 
we have it to stem when another noon stands above us ! 
Nay, we have every day to breast some tide- way in the 
never quiet sea. Our cares are many ; our burdens are 
heavy ; the points of weakness and exposure more than we 
can provide for ; the present arduous ; the future uncertain. 
We have need to summon ourselves to do our best. It 
is not more Paul's lips than the echo from our heart 
that bids ns " be strong ! " None of us can turn a deaf 
ear. If the voice were, " Be meek ! " " Be humble ! " " Be 
self-distrustful ! " we might postpone audience. But these 
other words, " Be strong ! " suit our nature and our need. 
II. And now, let us look a moment at the prevalen t re- 
liances for strength, and put an estimate upon them. One 
man confides in the strength of his will. He feels that he 
can carry his ends and make headway against all opposition 
by simple resoluteness of purpose. The soul that is vacil- 



146 STRONG IN THE LORD. 

lating and infirm in its counsels and choices, he regards as 
weak indeed. But decide, and adhere, with indomitable 
fixedness of mind, to the decision, and whatever hinders 
progress and success must give way. Well, there is strength 
in a strong will. But put this man in perplexity, and what 
becomes of his strength then ? If he knew which way to 
move, he would move with his whole force ; but he veers 
now to every point of the compass, looking for light. He 
vacillates now as much as his weak neighbor, not from 
weakness, but from ignorance. A stalwart vessel, iron 
pro wed, completely equipped, able to exchange buffets with 
an iceberg, but lost in the fog, without compass or star. 

A vigorous will, with nerves of steel, throws no light 
upon the darkness of to-morrow or the obscurities of Provi- 
dence. 

And another relies upon his Sagacity. He is acute, far- 
seeing. Give him a problem whose conditions he may 
weigh, whose practical solution lies behind the convexity of 
the future, and he will find a key for it. Perplexities are 
just a pleasant excitement to him. It will go hard but that 
he will discover a clue. But Sagacity makes no man a 
prophet. Providence will still have some secrets too deep 
for sharpest human eyes. Stir the passions and you blind 
those eyes as effectually as though the judgment were im- 
becile. Let calamity press the brain, and its processes are 
like the Egyptian chariots in the Bed Sea bed, driving 
heavily, without wheels. No safe reliance here. 

One stakes his issues upon his temperament. He is 
calm, imperturbable, not open to surprises, not to be taken 
off his guard, nor thrown off his balance. He takes life 
coolly — looks before he leaps — has no riotous passions to 



STRONG IN THE LORD. 147 

mutiny against his sceptre of self-control. He thinks ex- 
citable men weak and in peril, and feels himself secure. 
But temptation may assail him on this very side, fit itself to 
this temperament, use it to ensnare and overcome him, 
feather its fatal arrow out of his own unimpassioned cool- 
ness, and leave him stagnant where strenuous action were 
the call of the hour. 

And another makes his vigor of body and unbroken 
health his comfort. The "strength" that supports him is 
in his right arm, dances in his veins, swells in his muscles, 
looks toil and danger dauntlessly in the face, and challenges 
work, or care, or trials, with a confident smile. The fever 
of a night, the accident of a moment may make this physi- 
cal puissance weak as childhood. 

And another relies upon his Wealth, " Soul, take thine 
ease, thou art portioned and secured." The thief, the 
flame, the sea storm, the panic, a thousand fluctuations of 
which no prophet gives warning, laugh him to scorn. 

Another fortifies himself in the heights of his Good 
Name. Nothing can touch him behind these battlemented 
walls of a stainless reputation. And a single blast of the 
breath of Slander levels his towers in the dust. 

And there rise around another the castled securities of 
Home life and joys. These are the pledges he has given 
to virtue, these the perennial wells of contentment from 
which he draws. And, over some little grave, he stands 
bereft and inconsolable. 

And yet another rests on his Strength of Principles. 
This will abide. He is garrisoned within. Like an im- 
pregnable citadel, he has set up in his soul the purpose to 
do right. He is strong in his integrity. There can be no 



148 STRONG IN THE LORD, 

breach in these massive walls. Ah, if this made him indeed 
impregnable ! But the whole story of humanity might 
teach him better. The virtue that is merely human always 
gives way. It never yet stood immaculate ; treason within, 
or violence without, or some subtle undermining prostrates* 
its defenses, and the enemy comes in like a flood. 

Oh, no, my friend, none of these confidences are sure. 
Rest not in any nor all of them. Hear this other voice that 
speaks to-day as you look out from the morning of the year 
upon the unknown way your feet are to tread before night- 
fall, u Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His 
might ! " 

1. " Be strong " in the Truth of the Lord. Go as far as 
the JDixine Word goes ! Bate no jot nor tittle of any ut- 
terance of the Holy Ghost for any plea of the life that now 
is ! It is a weakness, and it makes us weak, to come down 
from the unchangeable sanctities and verities of our Reve- 
lation to accommodate the sliding scale of human opinion. 
Half confessions of the Truth and restricted and softened 
applications of the Truth are a snare and a delusion. We 
shall win our opponents, we say, if we are more liberal and 
round off our angles. We may join them to us, but we do 
not thus win them over, because we have left our distinctive 
ground. It is urged that the Life is more than Belief, 
which is a truth beyond doubt, but it is emphasized as 
though it meant that the Life might be right independent 
of Belief ; that the tree might bear good fruit whether it 
have roots or no ; that a man may throw away all belief — 
certainly all rigid Scriptural creeds — or even believe all 
wrong, and yet be and do all right. Now, a true and pure 
life grows out of Truth, not out of falsehood or emptiness. 



STRONG IN THE LORD. 149 

It grows out of one kind of truth, and that is Christian 
Truth — the truth that brings God in Christ near to our sin* 
fulness and helplessness, and gives us a hold by Faith upon 
the personal life of that Emmanuel who is " God with us." 
Let down the claims of inspired Truth and we may please 
men, but we can not permanently bless them. And so it is 
through the whole conflict of Truth with Error. Take the 
high ground, the highest ground, and we stand strong. Be- 
gin to dip our crest, set to work to frame a " Song of Degrees" 
.and we betray our own feet and slide, slide, till we get to 
the bottom, without ever helping anybody up. The work 
of the Lord on earth is not just a work of making men ami- 
able and moral ; it is the establishment of Truth and Holi- 
ness against all opposition, the setting up of a new kingdom, 
which is the kingdom of Righteousness and Love, and must 
overturn the existing kingdom of Evil before it can have 
the supremacy. We must stand by this Truth, go thoroughly 
and radically for its full significance, and let it get voice 
from our lips and the witness of our life. It is God's truth, 
and, standing upon it, we stand strong. " The word of the 
Lord endureth forever." Where this Truth leads, there we 
need not be afraid to follow. Plant yourself upon this loy- 
alty to the " Truth " and your feet can never be moved. 
The Truth will triumph, and you will triumph with it. You 
may be martyred for your steadfastness, but, even so, the 
Truth to which you give witness will stand your stately and 
imperishable monument, and you will the sooner have put 
on your crown. 

Truth has an inviolable majesty. She may be assailed ; 
8he can not be vanquished. Her robes may be defiled with 
the missiles of rebel hands, but the slimy blackness will fall 



150 STRONG IN THE LORD. 

off, and her own inner brightness will stream forth unob- 
scured. Error may have legs of iron and stand with a 
frowning height, but the feet are mingled of clay and will 
crumble till the Colossus is overthrown. Let one be pano- 
plied with the truth that is divine, and no weapon can pros- 
per against that armor of proof. 

Again : Be strong in the Lord as a Defense. There are 
times when we want a hiding-place, and it is written, " The 
Lord God is a ... . Shield." The Friend who stood between 
us and adversity, who kept the winds of Heaven from blow- 
ing too roughly upon us, is removed. The Gourd that grew 
to make us a leafy arbor and to shade our head from the 
heat withers away. We are left in comfortless widowhood or 
in desolate orphanage, and against the power that would 
wrong us, the covetousness that would make our little heri- 
tage less, the cool selfishness that would elbow us out of the 
way, we have only the plea of our helplessness to interpose. 
A day of sore personal trial comes upon us, in which the 
strain upon our fortitude and endurance, our strength of 
frame, and elasticity of hope, and patience of spirit, is such 
as we never remember before. And we shake our head 
doubtfully and half-despairingly, and question softly with 
ourselves, " How will this end? " The believing soul has no 
need to ask. He sees a hand reaching down to him out of 
heaven. Before him it holds an segis, orbed, ample, and 
impenetrable. Under this cover he sits serene, he walks in 
safety and quietness. "When calamities threaten him or foes 
assail him, he smiles a fearless, untroubled smile. The front 
of some whelming misfortune moves on to meet him. He 
smiles ever as he gazes. He sees something the world can 
not see. The great wave that was rolling up goes over him. 



STRONG IN THE LORD. 151 

Where now is his confidence ? And the world looks as the 
wave rolls past, and he re-appears unharmed and smiling as 
serenely as ever. Oh, what a strength of calmness have they 
who make the Lord their defense ! The secret of invincible 
endurance is with them. 

Again: Be strong in the Lord as a Portion. In partner- 
ship with a covenant-keeping God, we are rich enough. A 
long life of toil ends perhaps as it began ; except that our 
capital of muscle and enterprise is gone. When we should 
have reaped our harvest, and stored our granary, and sat 
down to eat of our abundance, and rest from the sentence 
of daily labor, too severe now for our failing vigor, our 
hands are empty. We can not begin again; we are too 
near the end for that. We have had our successes ; been 
lifted on the wave of prosperity ; but it has rolled from be- 
neath us and broken on the strand. And, with Age abating 
our natural force, multiplying our infirmities, and making 
the tribute of comfort and ease more needful and grateful, 
we find our worldly resources cut off, and dried up. And 
this occurs often in the history of good men, who use their 
means moderately, wisely, and beneficently, who love to 
do good with their increase, and whom all would rejoice to 
see prospered to the end. Ah, yes ! But in an old age of 
ease and affluence, they might not ripen so well for Heaven 
and Immortality. Our garden fruits grow most luscious 
when they are plucked from their sustaining stem and laid 
upon the shelf. And piety is most simple, and humble, 
and sweet, and ripe, when it is deprived of all earthly sup- 
ports. The discipline of a soul, it may be, can not be per- 
fected amid the sheltered warmth of earthly luxuries. 
Something of self-reliance, or of some confidence that is 



152 STRONG IN THE LORD. 

not Faith, may still divide it off from God. Leave it God 
alone as its portion, then it perceives its true wealth, and 
the emptiness of what was reckoned wealth before. It 
has now inexhaustible treasures and no care. There are 
heavenly dividends each day, this check on the bank of 
Faith, to fill up and sign every morning, in the Hebrew 
tongue, " Jehovah Jireh "; in ours, " The Lord will pro- 
vide ! " No changes, or chances, or vicissitudes, or panics, 
or erratic human schemes can touch this reliance. No 
more anxiety ; no troubled looks ahead ; no financiering ; 
" The Lord is my portion." Here are strength and peace. 

But the call is still more specially addressed to our dis- 
tinctive spiritual need. " Be strong in the Lord, as a Part- 
ner in all our personal Christian life ! " How many weak 
Christians there are in the Church of the living God, just 
breathing, but with pulses so languid, and vital currents so 
sluggish, that it is often a question with the soul itself, " Is 
not life extinct % " But my temperament, sighs one, it per- 
petually betrays me ; how can one grow in grace and be an 
eminent Christian, with such a natural climatic constitution 
as mine? And my circumstances, pleads another, they are 
so unfavorable to the cultivation of holiness. And look at 
the pressure of worldly care upon me, argues a third : I have 
time and thought for nothing else ; and here are Doctrines 
of the Scripture that stumble me; and here are great trials 
that sadden and oppress me, and here, for me, are arts of 
the Adversary, and temptations such as other men are free 
from ; and here are my weak health and shattered nerves ; 
and here are my ungovernable constitutional passions and 
proclivities, no man ever had so hard a strife to keep him- 
self right as I. Now, not one of these pleas touches the 



STRONG IN THE LORD. 153 

point, nor could they, if varied in ten thousand forms. 
What has any style of human weakness to do with our 
spiritual victories % Of course, we are weak, all weak, and 
utterly weak. Varieties of weakness or degrees of weak- 
ness we need not consider. None of us can find strength 
within. God in Christ is our strength. Join Him to any 
human heart, and what does that heart need more? To 
what grade of finite weakness, infinite strength is united, it 
matters not. Infirmities of will, peculiarities of temperament, 
the disadvantage of circumstances, the fiery vigor of passion, 
and all conceivable hindrances to goodness and purity ; here 
is a grandly overbalancing alliance, free and availing. 

Be strong, my Brother ! You, who are weakest, who ac- 
quiesce with a kind of contented hopelessness in your spir- 
itual failures ; deliver yourself from them by taking hold 
of the Divine Strength. Lean on Christ, and see if He will 
let you fall ! When the waves are roughest, and your fears 
greatest, reach out poor Peter's trembling hand, with only 
this word, " Lord, Save ! " and see if He will let you sink ! 

Take hold of it, the almighty hand, young Christian t 
Clasp it, palsied hand of Age ! You who fear, and you 
who presume ! Make the Lord your strength, for all trial 
and all work ! Say of no task, u l can do this." Call in 
the overcoming Helper ! And be this your single confidence, 
" I can do all things through Christ which strengthened 
me ! " Oh, what an athlete each frail and puny Christian 
might be instead ! What power in the bannered Sacra- 
mental Host, marching in the might of their Great Captain, 
to the final victories of the Faith ! What a year of growth, 
of progress, of triumph this might be upon which we enter 
now ! God himself, our Father, and Almighty Friend, give. 

you all a " Happy New Year ! " 
10 



XV. 

GUILELESSNESS. 

" Jesus saw Nathanael coming. to Him and said o* him, Behold an Israelite 
indeed, in whom is no guile." — John i. 47. 

IIST our studies of life and being, we are fascinated by that 
which is profound and inscrutable. The type of humanity 
which is all clear and transparent soon ceases to interest 
us. If we read a story we like a plot that moves at first in 
shadow. The novel-writer, meeting this sentiment of our 
heart, wraps his characters, at the beginning, in mist and 
mystery. If there be a smile on the face, it must touch the 
edge of a cloud. If the speech, in substance and in lan- 
guage, be apparently simple, it must still cover unsounded 
depths. The thought, the purpose, the reasoning, the mind, 
that are fathomed at a glance, are likely to be labeled 
" shallow." 

For ourselves, it is not quite agreeable to us that an eye 
that gives us a passing scrutiny should read us through and 
through. If we have no secrets that we care to keep, we 
like to be thought capable of holding such possessions, and 
if our treasure-box be locked, none can certainly know that 
it is empty. To lie open to all inspection, with no curtain 
at the window of the soul to be drawn and darkened when 
we please, seems to us a style of demonstration not signifi- 
cant of the most robust and intellectual manhood. To 
carry our jewels of thought, the refined gold of our qual- 



GUILELESSNESS. 155 

ities and acquisitions, all in the open paini of our hand, 
with nothing richer or rarer hidden, or supposed to be 
hidden, in the deep vaults behind deep iron doors, were to 
confess the poverty of our endowments ; and so to be un- 
able by our personal force to influence strongly the world's 
exchange of opinion and action. Such an issue were dis- 
appointing to our hopes and mortifying to our pride, and 
must be diverted by whatsoever device that shall seem to 
clothe us with a reserved power, sceptered and crowned in 
the realm of mental and moral life ! Utter frankness might 
so often, practically, be the equivalent of utter weakness, 
that it were the throwing away of whatsoever personal in- 
fluence a more studied reserve might enable us to wield. 

So we often reason in our self -protective musing. But 
this seems to me to be the very essence of weakness and 
falsehood. A true nobility of soul would say, every time, 
and under every strain, " Deliver me from an ascendency 
that must resort to any species of trickery to maintain itself 
among its fellows. Let me take any lowliest place accorded 
to my genuine self, rather than loftiest position under a 
mask of deceit ! " Any acting meant to disguise a failure 
either of competence or integrity or whatsoever element of 
a noble manhood, or to convey the impression and secure 
the conviction of a being and purpose contrary to fact, is 
an equal derogation from strength and truth. "An 
Israelite indeed." A disciple of the humble Nazarene, a 
MAU worthy the name, is one in whom " there is no guile." 

I do not mean that there will be no heights of vision, or 
aspiration, or spiritual uplift in such a soul, that any earthly 
spirit can not tread with him, side by side — that there will 
be no profound depths of conviction, self-deserving and 



156 CUILELESSNESS. 

humility beyond the deepest plummet of a life never look- 
ing at itself in the mirror of the divine word — that there 
will be no horizon of meditation, love, and sympathy, of 
habitual thought, and excursion of loyal feet or quickened 
wings, as far beyond the narrow circle of fleshly appetites, 
desires, and gratifications as the blue ethereal walls beyond 
the ridge of our home landscape — that there will be no pro- 
found belief, or controlling purpose, or strong emotion, or 
far flight of Hope and Faith, altogether outside the experi- 
ence and perhaps the comprehension of the trivial dreamer 
on the highways of sense — I do not mean to say, that, in 
these manifold exercises of the renewed heart, there shall 
not be mysteries so thickly veiled to those eyes of sense, 
that no dim ray shall flash from their abiding splendors 
upon that dull perception ; but I do mean to say that with 
the true Israelite there is never any forfeiture of honest 
intent, there is no misleading concealment of character and 
purpose, no false semblance worn to deceive, no subtle de- 
vices, by word or act, or by silence and inaction, to entrap the 
confidence of another in a conclusion known to be unsubstan- 
tial and unreal. 

We may profitably develop this Spirit of Guilelessness 
more in detail. With him in whose breast it reigns supreme 
it is the Soul of all Speech. It dictates the words that 
are spoken. They are the echoes of the inner life. They 
are the incarnation of the feeling and the thought. They 
are the vocal pulses of the passions throbbing under a veil. 
They are the honest messengers of the conclusions formed, 
the sensibilities stirred, and the resolves embraced, out of 
sight and hearing, in the interior chambers of the conscious- 
ness. If they express the emotion of Joy, it is a sunny 



GUILELESSN'ESS 157 

hour in the inner sky. If they sing in gladness, the poetry 
and the music keep time with the chime of happy melodies 
in the heart. If they express grief and sing only dirges, it 
is because a cloud broods the spirit and drenches it with 
cold, continuous rain. If they give out an affectionate salu- 
tation in domestic or social life, the warmth is more than 
lip-deep, — the words throb with heart-beats from under the 
ribs. In connubial intercourse the adjectives and expletives 
of. Love and Dearness are not just a convenient vocabulary 
in the use of which to avoid more formal and cumbrous 
speech, but the sweet translation of the heart's tenderness. 
When the tongue says, "Hail, brother!" the confirming 
echo from the recesses of the bosom is " brother." When 
the lips testify, " Welcome, friend ! " the heart is at home 
in that reception. In the business intercourse of life it is 
not thought necessary to mask the face, and to enter the 
market-place in disguise. If one would buy, he does not 
.assume a careless indifference, or a critical sharpness, as 
though, on the one hand, he had hardly a desire to secure 
possession, or, on the other hand, saw such defects that he 
must yet look farther before he could be suited. If he 
would sell, he does not affect either a lifeless languor of 
-address, or press the issue, as if such opportunity could 
hardly be repeated in a lifetime. If there are words spoken 
in the fellowship of the Christian life, they do not assume 
.an ardor or a zeal to which the breast is a stranger that 
others may catch the flames as of a sacred fire, and an arti- 
ficial devotion stimulate the sluggish devotion of another. 
If they are uttered for God's hearing, they do not practice 
the fearful audacity of putting on an outward emphasis of 
penitence, or desire, or zeal, for which, there is no inward 



158 GUILELESSNESS. 

reality — an eloquence intended to affect an earthly audience 
rather than the Divine. In a guileless soul, the words of 
the mouth truly translate the thoughts of the mind, the 
feelings of the heart, the resolves of the will. 

And the silence of such a soul is as honest as its speech. 
It is not a device to mislead without assuming the responsi- 
bility of beguiling words. It is not a cover for a meaning 
which the lips shrink from voicing, but which the heart, at 
once false and cowardly, hopes will be apprehended and 
confided in as the truth. There are those who dare not, in 
the face of Conscience and God's Law, bear a false witness 
by the direct utterance of the tongue, to whom it seems not 
at all a criminal thing to allow their silence to be wrongly 
interpreted, and even to mean that it shall carry an aspect 
contrary to the fact. If a man have something to sell, upon 
the good qualities of which he is glowing and eloquent, and 
utterly silent in respect to other qualities of which he is 
equally well aware, which neutralize the former, and 
which, under a clear intelligence of the case, would cast the 
balance of resolve against the purchase, is he innocent that 
he is dumb % If a merchant show to a shopper the attract- 
ive pattern of goods concerning whose utter want of dura- 
bility he is aware, but silent ; if a dealer display on the 
road, to charm a customer, the style and speed of a horse 
whose claim to soundness of wind and of limb, or to docility 
of temper, he knows to be empty, but utters no disclosure 
of the capital defect, he has not, indeed, sworn to a false- 
hood, but is he any the less a violator of the Truth ? If a 
man hear a reproachful story told against one of whom he 
is envious or jealous, and, knowing this tale to be a slander, 
does not contradict it, but allows it, through his seeming 



GUILELESSNESS. 159 

acceptance and indorsement, to gain additional currency 
and credit, has he not borne false testimony against his rival 
as really, if not as emphatically and responsibly, as if he 
had labelled the story " true " with his own hand ? A heart 
that is sensitive to the sacredness of truth and all complicity 
with evil, can not possibly consent, through its own fault, to 
be misinterpreted to the prejudice of another. Its silence, 
under any such strain, it will not suifer to be equivocal. 

Nor will a guileless man be less genuine, or less loyal 
to Truth, in his Action, than in the use of his lips. There 
is a proverb, on this point, as sound as it is familiar, 
"Actions speak louder than wordsP The ends upon which 
we are seen to be laying out our chief energy, are ends 
which we thus proclaim to be near and dear to our hearts. 
Or, if they are not, in themselves, attractive to our choice, 
they are, still, for some qualities of their own, or some re- 
lation to our interests and wishes, issues with which we can 
not dispense, and which we must accordingly serve to our 
utmost. Our actions do thus in manifold scenes express 
our convictions and choices, with a distinctness of utterance 
to which articulate speech could add nothing. Taking ad- 
vantage of this principle of interpretation, if we act toward 
another in a manner that implies confidence where we pro- 
foundly distrust, or that argues distrust where we have no 
reason to doubt or be afraid ; if we seem deeply interested 
in a cause or a person to whom and to which we are really 
indifferent, or quite unconcerned about an issue that occupies 
all our thoughts ; if we loiter and linger on our way, to 
avoid the suspicion of special concern when we would run 
or fly ; if we assume deafness to a conversation which we 
eagerly overhear, so as to conceal our knowledge of some 



160 GUILELESSNESS. 

secret sedulously guarded, and compromising perhaps to 
character and standing, — we practice willful deceptions ; we 
could not more vitally assail and betray the cause of Truth 
and Honesty ; we are as far removed from the exercise of a 
guileless spirit, as the direct opposite in life and character. 
In an ingenuous soul, Action corresponds with the spirit 
and intent of the life within, and if it fail fully to express 
the thought and purpose of the doer, it is through some in- 
firmity encountered in the execution, and not some intention 
to mislead and deceive. 

And now, there is a language in Face, and Look, and 
Attitude, and Manner, which as truly as the speech of the 
lips express the thoughts of the mind and the feelings of 
the heart. By these manifold tongues one may tell the 
genuine exercises of the Intelligence within, or he may bear 
false witness concerning their nature and strength. The 
whole outward man is articulate with the utterances that 
furnish incarnation to the inner life. The dilated eye and 
.the pallid cheek give out the language of Fear. Trembling 
lips and flowing tears are the legible tokens of Grief. Firm 
foot and dauntless gaze convey the challenge of unconquerable 
Coitrage. Lifted hands and raised eyebrows are exclama- 
tion points of Wonder and Surprise. The eager welcome 
of Love is seen in outstretched arms and forward leaning, 
and tender light of flushing face. Joy wreathes the mouth 
with a smile, flashes in lambent gladness from under the eye- 
lids, and breathes in quickened gushes of melodious breath. 
. We know Anger when we see it in scowling brow and 
clenched fist and looks with dagger-points. The 6ide-long, 
half-covert glances of Suspicion, Jealousy, and Distrust re- 



G UILELESSNESS., \§\ 

veal their disturbing presence, exploring eagerness, and 
longing for confirmation. The unchanging downward look, 
and clasped fingers and motionless drooping of form, show 
where Despair has set his seal. And parted lips, and out- 
reaching arms and sudden lifting of the eager gaze and 
sheen of dawning and sunrise on the face, are the draperies 
of the revisiting, fair, Angel Hope. We are familiar, every 
one of us, with this varied dialect of the Spiritual, giving 
out through the Material the record of its wide range of 
passionate sensibility. We need no interpreter when this 
mute alphabet invites our reading. It is our own vernacu- 
lar, not a foreign tongue. The language is itself identical 
with our thought of its meaning, and requires no transla- 
tion to enable us to comprehend. Sight is intelligence. 
F>ut, now, all these forms of speech may be used dishonestly. 
They may be drafted into the service of craft and guile, 
They may be sent out with false messages of the Feeling 
and Purpose, whose livery they wear. Every one of them 
may be commissioned to bear testimony to the existence 
<of what it naturally and legitimately conveys when there is 
no corresponding substance in the soul. In every instance, 
we can translate the language without difficulty, but who 
speaks, and what speaks, whether reality or fraud, whether 
Nature, in its own honesty, or hypocritical Falsehood, we 
can not always be sure. But all these forms of expression 
are transparent and translucent with the guileless soul. 
They correspond with the inward verity. The thoughts 
and feelings, seemingly emphasized in this visible language, 
are the real thoughts and feelings of the Soul. Behind the 
smile is the Joy; in the embrace, the Love; with the tear, 
the sympathetic Grief ; in bowed head and bended knee, 



162 GUILELESS ATE SS. 

Humility and Devotion ; in the melody of lifted notes,, 
the pulsations of Gratitude and Praise ; in all the demon- 
strations, the soul of Sincerity and Truth. 

My friends, is this quality of Guilelessness out of 
place in a world like this, and with such a race as ours ? 
Because there is so much cheating, and lying, and acting on 
every hand, must we cheat and lie, if we would live ? Be- 
cause there is so little of this frank and guileless spirit, is it 
in vain that we seek to exercise it ? Shall we reap the 
penalty of such openness, and work no good by our example, 
receiving only contempt for it as a weakness? Would it 
leave every man defenseless among those who are ready to 
take advantage of Honesty, and to impose upon Sim- 
plicity ? Must we meet craft with craft, and match sharp 
and cunning devices against those who devise our illusion 
and betrayal \ 

I do not think we are to raise the question of consequences. 
That which is in accordance with the divine will, which 
wears here and hereafter the lustre of a divine eulogy, need 
not ask what reception it is likely to meet with in the 
fellowships and rivalries of the present life. If it be right 
in God's sight, if our blessed Master commend it, if He 
hang a wreath of honor upon such a trait in a human soul, 
no matter whether human lips approve or revile, it is for us. 
by God's help, to win and wear it. How shall the world 
ever come to know the beauty and the price of Truth, and 
be weaned from all its own cowardly and selfish hypocrisies 
if nowhere this practical loveliness be seen ? How con- 
tagious such a spirit might be, acting itself out in some 
single illustration, in all the round of human intercourse. 
Deceit would writhe with shame before it, and flee aw T ay 



G UILELESSNESS. 163 

from it, and hide its head forever. Oh, that we might 
always and everywhere be clothed in this celestial transpar- 
ency, ■flinging away the grossness of our earth-woven dis- 
guises; and in all interchanges Godward and Man ward, speak 
and live and act the honest meaning of an honest and truth- 
loving heart — Israelites indeed, in whom is no guile ! 



XVI. 

MUTUAL DUTIES. 

" . . . . Am 1 my brother's keeper?" — Gen. iv., part 9. 

¥HEN the world was young, two brothers, the first and 
second bora of humankind, brought offerings unto the 
Lord. The elder, who was a tiller of the ground, brought 
of the fruits of his husbandry. The younger, who was a 
keeper of sheep, brought of the firstlings of his flock. The 
Lord looked down from heaven and beheld His worshippers, 
and knowing what was in their hearts, He had respect unto 
the younger and his offering ; but unto the elder and his 
offering He had not respect. And the elder brother was 
very wroth and his countenance fell, and the Lord reasoned 
with him for his anger, and kindly encouraged him to walk 
in the paths of virtue, with the promise of accepting him 
therefor, and then left him to his thoughts. 

And Cain drew near to Abel and talked with him and 
wiled him away with friendly words from their parents' 
sight, and they went together out into the field, the one lov- 
ing and trusting as a brother should, and full of peace as one 
who has just been accepted of God in prayer ; the other with 
kindness on his lip and murder in his heart. And when 
they were alone Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and 
slew him. 

We need not dwell upon this old, old story. The inso- 



MUTUAL DUTIES, 165 

lent challenge put by the murderer's lips to the righteous 
Judge, who came to question him at the call of his brother's 
blood, suggests my theme. I wish to show that it is the 
ordinance of God that every man should keep his brother- 
man, and how the duty should be performed. 

Look, first, at the natural relationship of man to man un- 
der the Fatherhood of God. Take the children of any hu- 
man pair, and note how their relationship determines their 
mutual duties. Sprung from the same loins, nursed at the 
same breast, fostered by the same care, blessed by the same 
love, fed at the same table, clothed by the same providing 
hand, bearing the same name and the common family like- 
ness, who does not see that this fraternal relation implies the 
fraternal affection and the fraternal duties % What one of 
the group can excuse himself from loving and helping his 
cradle-mates % 

How must parents feel who see hostility to each other 
among their own offspring'! And, on the other hand, how 
do parents feel, what grateful and glad emotions, who see 
their children growing up in harmony and love, stepping 
forward, each in the other's exigency, to extend a help- 
ing hand, and carrying the tenderness of the early and in- 
alienable bond down to gray hairs ! There is all the interest 
and obligation of such relationship in God's household of the 
human family. God is our Great Father, and all of us are 
His children — born of the dust by the same creative word, 
fashioned by the same skill, breathed into by the same 
breath of life, led and fed and clothed by the same provi- 
dential hand ; how clear is it that every man is our brother 
by common descent, by a common likeness and a common 
parentage. It is explicitly written that God " hath made 



166 • MUTUAL DUTIES. 

of one "blood all nations of men." I can not, then, look 
upon the face of a human being without seeing a brother. 
If I trample upon a poor, friendless creature, under any sky 
of earth, my foot is on a brother's breast. Did God teach 
no universal obligation when He constituted the tribes of 
men one vast fraternity and Himself the common Father ? 

But this mutual obligation appears also from the fact of 
out mutual dependence. 

God has so conditioned us that no man can live independ- 
ently of his fellow-man. This spirit of dependence is in our 
hearts ; we seek to lean on some other heart ; we yearn for 
human fellowship and sympathy ; we pine when we are 
alone ; we are made for social life and find our highest hap- 
piness in taking others by the hand, in looking into the 
faces of others, in hearing the friendly words of others ; and 
herein is our mutual dependence. 

There are few things that we can enjoy alone. We want 
some one to enjoy pleasures witn us. The sublime of the 
mountain summit, the beauty of the far hazy landscape, have 
lost half their charm if there be none to look upon them 
with us. The pathos or eloquence of a book is redoubled if 
there be one by our side to whom we may recite the periods 
that have captivated us. And so of many a scene of social 
enjoyment, the companionship is more the source of the 
delight, often, than any feature of the scene itself. 

Then, again, we can not undertake our enterprises alone ; 
we need other minds to counsel, other feet to run, other 
hands to fashion and make and lift. We avail ourselves of 
the accumulated wisdom of the past and of the co-operation 
of the present. No man can do for himself what, in the 
division of labor, in the mutual helpfulness of the arts, in 



MUTUAL DUTIES. 167 

the combination of friendly forces, is done for him. And 
however he may fancy himself in love with solitude, no man 
in his secret soul can quite divorce himself from his kind. 
Simeon, " the Stylite," who lived nearly forty years alone on 
the top of his column in the open air, is yet a witness for 
us, in that he thirsted still for human praise and chose his 
abode where he could look down from his perch upon the 
throngs of a populous city. These indissoluble ties, these 
mutual dependencies, can not be dissociated from mutual 
duties. 

This relative obligation is clearly and impressively sug- 
gested, also, by the example of Him whom we call " Our 
Elder Brother." He became a brother of our humanity for 
this among other ends, that He might show us how to do a 
brother's duty, how to perform a brother's part ; and what 
was the lesson, what offices of brotherly kindness filled up 
His life ! 

" He went about doing good," is the comprehensive an- 
swer. Every day some new miracle of mercy ! ISFow it 
was healing some life-long infirmity, now it was restoring 
sight, now opening the ear and loosing the tongue, now giv- 
ing strength to a withered arm, now feeding a famished 
multitude, now raising the dead and giving them back 
warm and breathing to the hearts that mourned. 

We can not, indeed, work miracles to bless our fellow- 
men ; but a look of kindness, a word of kindness, an act of 
kindness always blesses a needy brother, and may sometimes 
cheer him almost like a miracle. And if the example of 
the " Man of Nazareth " have any force, these overtures 
of good-will are a debt we owe to all. 
• And such brotherly charity is distinctly enjoined by Script- 



168 MUTUAL DUTIES. 

ure statute. This is the very essence of that Golden Rule 
which embodies the comprehensive spirit of the whole legal 
code, that divine formula of legislation which stands in its 
sublime simplicity so far above all the teachings of human 
philosophy, the purest maxims of the world's wisest sages, 
" Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should 
do to you, do ye even so to them ; for this is the Law and 
the Prophets." With this rule accords that second great 
command of all, which is declared to be like unto the first, 
" Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." And if any man, 
ask, with the " lawyer" of old, " Who is my neighbor ? " he 
may be answered as the Master answered His questioner, with 
the beautiful parable of " the Good Samaritan " and its ear- 
nest practical lesson, " Go and do thou likewise ! " 

How then, we may proceed to inquire, is this fraternal 
duty to be performed ? How, in what respects, are we to 
keep our brother '( Generally, it may be answered, as we 
keep ourselves. This, we have seen, is the Scripture meas- 
ure of brotherly love ; and any " scrimping " of it is to take 
away so much from the words written in the Booh ! 

But we may be more explicit. Certainly this faithful 
keeping of our brother implies sympathy and kindness for 
him in the common exigencies of life. We are to help him 
in his misfortune ; we are to draw his ox from the pit ; we 
are to run to extinguish the flames of his dwelling. We 
are to lend him the strength of our muscles where his own 
are too weak. We are to watch with him in sickness ; if 
he be querulous and whimsical and unreasonable when his 
disease is on him, we are to put up with it. He is our 
brother. We are to go to him with a grasp of the hand 
and a sympathizing heart when Death enters his household. 



MUTUAL DUTIES. 169 

We are to follow with the mourners to the grave ; he is our 
brother. We are to consider him in his destitution, to open 
our stores to him as God hath blessed us, to give to him, not 
as to a beggar — a gift may be a humiliation to a sensitive 
heart — to give to him as a brother. We are to strengthen 
and encourage him in his industries and enterprises ; to 
hold him up till he can go alone; to give him, in homely 
but hearty and honest expression, to " give him a lift" just 
when it is most needful and will go farthest in blessing 
him. There are ways enough for us all to do these com- 
mon kindnesses to our brethren. We are not so forward in 
this good work as to need no exhortation. And the stand- 
ard of action on this line will bear raising with us all. 

We are to keep our brother, again, in his refutation. A 
man's good name is his capital for usefulness. Sully it, and 
you take away so much of his power to do good. If the 
robbery touched only his sensibility, if it wounded his feel- 
ings and did no more, it would scarce be brotherly to per- 
petuate it ; but when it kills his usefulness, blasts his pros- 
pects, blights his hopes, takes from his hand every instru- 
ment of profitable toil, and makes those whom he would 
bless look cold upon him and shun him, one might as well 
stab with the dagger as with a slanderous tongue. We are, 
then, to be very careful, by whatever feelings we are actu- 
ated, to speak nothing wantonly, or thoughtlessly, much less 
maliciously to another's discredit. And when a tale of 
slander reaches us about a third person, we should look dis- 
pleased upon such a visitor ; we should avoid taking in the 
poison if we can, for despite our primest purpose its subtle 
exhalations may affect all our thoughts and feelings. But 
if we must hear it, as the guardian of our brother's fair 
11 



170 MUTUAL DUTIES. 

fame we have something to do in the premises. We are 
not to smile and nod and say, "Aha," like the enemies of 
David. We are to hold our brother guiltless till his guilt 
is proved. In most cases, the way for us to do is to silence 
it at once, to see that it dies with us, to be sure that it gets 
no farther currency by having our name linked with it, to 
regard it as we would if we had found a viper's nest, 
something to set the heel upon and crush the life out of it. 
If we kept our brother's purse, would it be right to let any 
man, with an itching palm, put his hand in ? And being 
the keeper of his reputation, is it right to let any man who 
has a foul tongue, soil it in our hearing? I look upon it as 
one of the most sacred duties we owe our brother, to watch 
vigilantly over all that can affect his good name. We can 
hardly sin against a more vital social interest, than against 
the sacredness of character. 

The keeping of our brother includes also a healthful 
moral influence upon him. All that we can do to restrain 
him from going wrong, from doing wrong, we ought to do. 
If our doing a thing that to us is right, or indifferent in its 
character, lead him to do a thing that for him is wrong, we 
had better refrain. If our position, not in itself a wrong 
one for us to keep, shelter him from convictions of truth and 
duty, and fortify him in a standing that is wrong for him, 
we had better change our position. If you ask me, by what 
right I thus entrench upon your liberty for your brother's 
sake, I will answer you by the lips of Paul : " Take heed, 
lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling- 
block to them that are weak." And again, " If meat make 
my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world 



MUTUAL DUTIES. 171 

standeth, lest I make my brother to offend." If you say 
you can not come up to this magnanimity of Paul, that you 
are not prepared to give up something which it is right and 
innocent for you to indulge in, because others may make a 
bad use of your example, when they have no business to ; 
that every man must stand or fall by himself, I reply, u Be 
it so ; if you are not equal to such self-sacrifice as Paul's, 
own up, and do not try to clear yourself. In this there is 
somebody you love a little better than you love your 
brother." And I reply again, " It is not true that any man 
can stand or fall by himself." " For none of us liveth to 
himself," saith the oracle, " and no man dieth to himself," 
and immediately it adds : " Why dost thou set at naught 
thy brother, for we shall all stand before the judgment-seat 
of God." And one of the most tremendous chapters of 
human trial, in the last great day, will be that which in- 
vestigates this very matter of reciprocal influences, and calls 
in question the tendency of one man's conduct and belief 
to determine the conduct and belief of another man. 

And yet once more : We are to keep our brother in the 
life of his soul. Religion, you may say, is a matter be- 
tween every man and his God ; and there is a sense in which 
this is true. We can not repent and believe for one of all 
our fellow-men. But let us not affirm that we have here 
alone no responsibility in regard to the destiny of others. 
We ought to feel, in this relation, an interest for our 
brother as much deeper than that we feel on other matters 
as the welfare of the soul transcends all temporal problems. 
Which of us can be satisfied to do nothing more than to save 
his own soul alive ? Who would look upon the throng that 
shall be gathered upon that final day and see among all the 



172 MUTUAL DUTIES. 

Redeemed not one whom he has led to serious thoughts and 
penitent resolves ; and, on the other hand, not one known 
to him on earth on whom he had tried the utmost efficacy of 
prayer and entreating love ? Look upon that friend by your 
side still out of Christ ! He is your brother. Shall he re- 
joice and sing praises with you through his immortal exist- 
ence, or, among all the saved, shall his face nowhere be 
seen ? In all the song shall his voice never be heard ? 
Where, then, shall he be when you are at home in your 
heavenly mansion ? Shall he be to you then a lost brother, 
one separated from you, from hope, from bliss forever? 
Think of it now, while you stand side by side with him be- 
neath the blue arch of mercy, beneath the bright bow of 
promise! G-o not alone up the star-paved steeps to the 
celestial heights. Clasp your brother's hand ; entreat him, 
lead him, draw him ; with kindly violence " compel" him to 
go with you on pilgrimage to the Happy-land! 

Oh, open your eyes, each one of you, with a new look 
upon every brother's face ! Let the constraint of a new and 
sacred care for him come in upon your heart ! Keep bright 
as shining gold the links of love between you and each 
earthly mate ! Let nothing that concerns his interest and 
happiness in the present life be to you a matter of indiffer- 
ence or neglect. With chief est solicitude, look ahead for 
him to the issue of the great day of trial and award ! 

So live and walk, amid the fellowships of the present ; 
your tender, faithful, and vigilant self-devotion answering 
the question of the text, with soft, affirmative repetition, 
" My brother's keeper ! " 



XVII. 

FOE THANKSGIVING. 

EETUENS FOE MERCIES. 

"What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me?" — 
Ps. cxvi. 12. 

I COME before you at this time, my friends, not to engage 
you in the elaborate discussion of some doctrine of the 
Scripture to our finite comprehension environed with diffi- 
culties, or, to our dull spiritual discernment, draped in 
cloud and mist ; nor to propose some nice question in Morals 
on which variant consciences take opposite sides ; nor to vin- 
dicate some high attribute of Jehovah, the tread of whose 
going forth is in the deep waters. Our text calls us to 
wrestle with no such problems as these. It is just a simple 
self -query — the soliloquy of a pious heart, before which, as 
to the Prophet on Horeb, in the cleft of the rock, a vision 
of the Divine Goodness is passing by. 

I take up these words of an intense and almost despairing 
K gratitude, " What shall I render ?" that they may stir within 
us, through all this memorial week, a livelier sense of our 
ever undischarged debt to the mercy of the kingly Bene- 
factor who reigns over us in love, and put us upon a more 
diligent and eager search to find appropriate responses. 

The heart — I mean our heart, yours and mine — our way- 
ward human heart, grows strangely selfish under favors. 
You know how it is in earthly relations. Let us receive 



174: RETURNS FOR MERCIES. 

one bounty from any hand, and we become clamorous for 
another, as if the first were a pledge unredeemed until 
the second is bestowed. Let us receive frequent boun- 
ties, and we come to think we have a claim and can set up 
a title, and feel wronged if the stream of kindness be cut 
off or diverted to flow past some other threshold instead of 
ours. How often do we encounter such an experience in 
bestowing our trifling personal charities. The family whose 
need we have often relieved look upon the relation as estab- 
lished, and present their fresh appeals with the confidence 
of one urging a legal demand, rather than the suppliant 
lowliness of one asking alms. 

To us it looks sometimes a little cool in these pensioners, 
that the multiplication of our free gifts should only, in 
their view, settle their right to them, and make both their 
asking and their thanks almost superfluous. 

And we, ourselves, if we are not watchful, fall into the 
same insensibility and presumption under the favors of 
bountiful Heaven. God has always blessed us and kept us, 
fed, nourished, and cherished us, therefore we expect it. 
Having been so generous, He must continue His gifts, and 
the showers of His benefits will still fall as a matter of 
course. He has met and endowed our dependence hitherto, 
therefore this help is due for all time to come ! 

So the question, with our perverse and inveterate selfish- 
ness, is apt to be, not " What shall / render? " but " Why 
doth He yet withhold any good ? " 

To make us ashamed of such a spirit, to waken and vital- 
ize our palsied emotions of Love and Gratitude, and to 
quicken us in the exercise of a humane and Christian benefi- 
cence, let us put ourselves in " the cleft of the rock," and 



RETURNS FOR MERCIES. 175 

hear that voice proclaiming, " The Lord, the Lord God, 
merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in 
goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving 
iniquity, transgression, and sin," and see if that tender self- 
apostrophe of the Psalmist in the text be not graciously in- 
stinctive within us, and whether we can not frame some 
fitting answer. 

And First of all, let the Divine Charities, for which 
we are to render some thankful tribute, arise and pass be- 
fore us. " All His benefits ! " What pen, what tongue, 
what faithful chronicle can set them forth in order ? What 
arithmetic can reckon up their totals ? 

We must review and rehearse the story of a life-time, to 
hear the distinct utterances of ministrant agencies, whose 
numbers, not to say whose special offices, are beyond our 
computation ; we must translate the thoughts of God 
toward us from oldest eternity. What volume, what library, 
could compass such a narrative, and what progress in the re- 
cital were possible in one short Sabbath hour. We can not, 
then, take up this inquiry in its details, but glance only at 
grand outlines. 

By the painter's art we are made to see, on a few feet of 
moving canvas, a panorama of hundreds of leagues, mount- 
ains and vales and majestic streams, forests and cities and 
broad spaces of human culture, travelling from the snows of 
the Arctic to the verdure and flowering of the Tropics, the 
length of a continent, in the brief passing of a quiet evening 
at home. So, sitting here, we may catch a hurried pano- 
ramic view of the Divine Goodness to us personally, as we 
unroll before our thoughts the canvas of memory. And, 
first, at the rising of the curtain, appear the scenes of our 



176 RETURNS FOR MERCIES. 

birth and infancy, our own faces and forms in miniature. 
The comforts of a civilized and Christian home are there ; 
do you see it again, your own early home ? gratulant friends 
are near, tenderest parental care smiles upon us, and in the 
background, dimly and softly pencilled, stand our Guardian 
Angels, come to take in charge the new-born life. 

The canvas moves on, and our childhood looks out upon 
us, laughing, merry, gleeful childhood ; we roam in sunny 
places — do you see it, hillside and garden, and meadow and 
brook ? — we gather fairest flowers ; we frolic with chosen 
mates ; smiles and tears give the lights and shades of an 
April day, and again kind hands robe us and feed us and 
cherish us, kind hearts soothe our little sorrows and lead us 
to the portals of knowledge, and again bright Guardians, 
out of Heaven, hover around to shield and to bless. This 
scene passes, and, in richer and warmer coloring still, suc- 
ceeds the golden Bummsr of our Youth, and close behind, 
with not a few of us, the serene and fruitful days of our 
Manhood's Autumn. Your own thought must fill the 
blanks along these wide interspacings. On more than one 
reach of the canvas there may flit dusky shadows, but how 
quickly the light follows; there are here and there arid 
places, but beyond, greener meadows and broader harvests. 
There are some attitudes of sadness, and grouped around 
manifold comforters. There are occasional couches of sick- 
ness and pain, and brighter hues of Nature above and be- 
neath, and warmer greetings of friends welcome abroad the 
pale one coming forth from the chamber of captivity. 

And, again, as the canvas moves on, the outside ministra- 
tions that wait on this human life, in all its periods, appear. 
Earth, with its flocks and herds, its fruits and flowers, its 



RETURNS FOR MER CIE S. 177 

nodding sheaves and yellow corn ; Sky, with its lighted 
Sun, and shimmering stars, its soft airs and fertilizing 
showers, its nourishing and protecting snows, and birds of 
summer-time ; the Seasons, laden with promise or bounty ; 
the Oceans, cooling our fervid heats and softening winter 
rigors, and piling our board with delicacies ; toiling and 
faithful Providences, opening pathways for our feet, smooth- 
ing the rough places and elevating the low, and scattering 
plenty and gladness all along by the roadside. And still 
the lengthening canvas is unexhausted. There are village 
schools, and academic walks, and galleries of art, and 
halls of legislation, and monuments of freedom, and stately 
fabrics of public munificence. 

And now there come into the field of vision the domes 
and spires of Christian Temples — Altars for the worship, 
not of an "unknown God," but of One revealed as a 
Father, Friend, and Redeemer — and greater wonders yet 
behind ; a Gross and an uplifted Sacrifice ; expiation of 
earth's sin and guilt ; above, the face of God reconciled ; 
below, the joy of pardon and hope breaking into songs ; 
and light streaming down from the opening heaven, and 
poor wanderers guided up the radiant steeps to the shining 
threshold. What would avail us all bounties of Earth, Sea, 
and Air ; all products of varying climes and revolving sea- 
sons ; all means of personal culture and enjoyment, if this 
great, costly Redemption were not superadded? Hopes 
immortal spring here. Joys pure and enduring bloom on 
this garden-spot ; light for the erring, white robes for the 
vile, pardon for the guilty, rest for the weary, life for the 
condemned, life with God, life forevermore ! 

We pause here to let our hearts speak. Their full emo- 



178 RETURNS FOR MERCIES. 

tion — at least with some of us, and I trust with all — can no 
longer be suppressed ; it will throb forth, into vocal utter- 
ance : " What shall I render unto the Lord for all His 
benefits toward me ? " 

And now for our answer. First, then: We can not 
directly enrich God the Giver. If we sought to give back 
some actual return, what should it be which is ours to give 
or withhold, and not already His f This would be like the 
gratuity of a child who should go to his father's purse for 
gold with which to purchase that father a present. God is 
the universal proprietor, and has personal need of no treas- 
ures from us. He forestalls all such offers by setting forth 
the inventory of His possessions. " I will take no bullock 
out of thy house, nor he goats out of thy fold. For every 
beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand 
hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains ; and the wild 
beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would 
not tell thee; for the world is mine, and the fullness 
thereof." 

But, again: We can gratify the Divine Heart with 
Thanksgiving and Praise. The appreciation of a gift is 
always pleasant to the heart of the giver. Often the best 
pay we can receive for favors are words of gratitude warm 
from the heart. Any returns unaccompanied by such deep 
and true emotion of soul we should reject as worthless , 
because heartless. There is no reason to doubt that God 
loves to hear His goodness celebrated in expressions of 
grateful Praise. The uninterrupted music and worship of 
Heaven are ever-varied praises, and the living creatures 
there rest not day nor night to give glory, and honor, and 
thanks to Him that sitteth on the throne. Yes, by the 



RETURNS FOR MERCIES. \^ 

vocal, affectionate gratitude of our hearts we can convey 
joy to the heart of God, as by our dumb insensibility to 
favors we can grieve that heart. And here is a return the 
poorest can make to the Great Benefactor. In our most 
abject penury, with nothing but the gifts we have received, 
there is still the fullness of a loving and thankful spirit we 
can offer as ours. We can/^, we can speak our gratitude. 
We can bring and lay at God's feet, as a free-will offering, 
that which shall swell the volume of the Divine emotions 
and minister to the blessedness of the Infinite mind — our 
poor, but honest and hearty thanks. We can lift, to the 
hand that has enriched us, our eyes overflowing with warm, 
grateful tears ; and there are no gems of the mines, no jew- 
eled splendors of angel coronets, more lustrous and precious 
in the sight of God. 

My friends, I fear that in our communion with Heaven 
we do not abound, as we ought, in praises. Our addresses 
to the Supreme we fill up with confessions — alas, that there 
should be so much occasion for these ! — and with petitions, 
and doubtless our need is great ; and with intercessions ', 
and truly there are objects enough for such a memorial ; 
and too often thus our songs die out into a burdened minor, 
or into deep silence. So the goodness of God passes unsung. 
Oh, we should have more breath for Praise. Praise should 
be a larger element in all our worship, public, social, do- 
mestic, and private. Our sad thoughts we should put away, 
our sorrowful faces we should put off more frequently, and 
let joyous anthems from Earth to Heaven make our homes, 
and temples, and the blue, high arches ring. We should 
call to each other in those triumphal chants of Israel's royal 
Harper : " Oh, come, let us sing unto the Lord ; let us make 



180 RETURNS FOR MERCIES. 

a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation ! Let us come 
before His presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful 
noise unto Him with psalms ! " 

But, once more : We are to make response to our question, 
chiefly, as I think, by bestowing blessings upon others. " Thou 
art my Lord," is the meditation of David. "My goodness 
extendeth not to thee " — I can not send enriching to the 
hand of the Sovereign — " but to the saints that are in the 
earth, and to the excellent in whom is all my delight." 
There are channels through which we may reach by our 
gifts the heart of our Great Benefactor, and these are the 
wants and sorrows of our fellow-men. " Then shall the 
righteous answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw we Thee an 
hungered, and fed Thee, — or thirsty, and gave Thee drink ? 
When saw we Thee a stranger and took Thee in, or naked 
and clothed Thee ? Or when saw we Thee sick or in prison, 
and came unto Thee? And the King shall answer and say 
unto them : Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have 
done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have 
done it unto me." 

Every cry of want, then, at our door is the voice of Jesus 
pleading ; every groan of an oppressed and burdened hu- 
manity is an echo from the heart of Jesus ; the low, distant 
chorus that comes over the sea from Pagan lands, " Send us 
Light ; we perish ! " brings the accents of Jesus to our ear. 
He who gives not for the relief of his needy human brother 
would not visit the Saviour " sick and in prison." And 
every act of kindness we do a poor sufferer in our path, 
every loaf we cast to the starving, every garment we give to 
the naked, every cup of cold water to the thirsting, every 
word of cheer to the disconsolate, every Bible to souls igno- 



RETURNS FOR MERCIES. 181 

rant of the way of Life, because of oar debt of love to Jesus, 
renders back to Him, for His benefits toward us, returns 
which He shall acknowledge when He cometh in the pomp 
and power of the last great day, and all His holy angels with 
Him. 

The man, then, who asks this question sincerely, out of 
the earnest emotions of a thankful spirit, overwhelmed with 
the greatness of its debt to redeeming Love, has his abound- 
ing answers. They call to him from all sorrow and suffer- 
ing ; they call from the unevangelized poor around him ; 
they call from the islands of the sea and the continents of 
gloom ; they call in every tattered garb and shivering form 
and pale, sorrow-worn, outstretched hand and timid voice 
that asks for alms in honest and doleful need. 

The Christian age is counting out now its lengthening 
scroll by the chime of passing centuries and of thrice as 
many generations, and yet how circumscribed is the field 
within which the saving efficacy of its light and truth is 
known and tested ! We have written it "Anno Domini " for 
almost two thousand years, and yet the most populous kin- 
dreds of the one human family have never heard the story 
that makes the birth of Jesus the most wondrous chapter in 
the annals of our race. " Go ye into all the world and 
preach the Gospel to every creature ! " The words quiver 
with the love and authority that thrill them, and yet we keep 
our pleasant homes and talk on our trifling themes and inter- 
change our social greetings, and let the " good news," the 
" glad tidings " go unheralded. We send ships of advent- 
ure and of scientific exploration to the frozen Pole ; we send 
ships of commerce and trade to populous islands and king- 
doms under the burning Equator; we go ourselves on pleas- 



182 RETURNS FOR MERCIES. 

lire trips that climb and descend the steep, rounded sides of 
this our native sphere, girding it with the meeting tracks of 
our footsteps, and still we have not time, nor strength, nor 
means to publish the great salvation to the perishing millions 
of the Human Family. 

And it is not simply imperious Duty that we set aside, 
it is not only royal authority that we disobey — they are not 
the bonds of human fraternity whose strains we ignore, the 
plea of brothers' blood ; it is the melting claim of gratitude's 
mightiest debt to which our hearts are so insensible. 

Ah, what a joy it should be to us to discover any overture 
of answering love welcome to our Great Benefactor, any is- 
sue dear to His heart which we can serve by the utmost ten- 
sion of ours, any expression of obedient and faithful loyalty 
from us, for which He sits waiting on His throne ! I hear 
His voice to-day, " Lovest thou me ? Feed my sheep ; feed 
my lambs ! " I see His wounded hands stretched out as He 
calls for the reward of His great sacrifice, " the joy that was 
set before Him " of a redeemed and glorified humanity. 

Blessed Master, take us and all that we are and have for 
this great passion of Thine infinite nature, this costly scheme 
of salvation for a lost race, this incessant work of doing good 
to all whom we can reach with blessing, as our humble and 
thankful return for all Thy benefits ! 



XVIII. 

COMPENSATION. 

"And the Lord God prepared a gourd and made it to come up over Jonah, 

that it might he a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief " — 

Jonah iv. 6. 

THERE is one law of Divine Providence illustrated in 
this incident of long ago, working silently and cease- 
lessly in every lot of life, to comfort and cheer our hearts 
amid whatever ills and losses, whose ministrations we are too 
apt to overlook or undervalue. We may call it The Law 
of Compensation, borrowing this term from the science of 
Comparative Anatomy. It may help our sense of the Good 
ness of God, and so the expression of our gratitude, to set forth 
a little, to our thought, the working of this beneficent Law. 
The significance of this word " Compensation " and its con- 
stant presence amid our daily experience may be easily illus- 
trated. 

It is, for instance, one of the painful things of social life 
that friends, loving and beloved, must often part. Life's 
duties summon each for a time to pursue his separate way. 
The more their mutual friendship is prized, the higher the 
value set upon each other's society, the more grieved are 
they at the necessities which sunder them. They take each 
other by the hand, they look earnestly upon each other's 
faces, they speak kindest words, they wave to each other as 
each disappears from sight their last distant adieu, and the 



1 84: CO MP ENS A TION. 

heart is filled with its sense of loneliness. Use may harden 
us to all this, but the true heart learns the lesson slowly. 
These scenes are life's every-day experience, and sometimes 
there are no griefs like them. 

Now, what is the " Compensation " ? Why, this, in part : 
it is a new revelation to each of the other's attachment and 
worth, and so it but endears the twain ; and this, chiefly, the 
luxury of the reunion. There is no single joy of social life 
like that of meeting after separation. The face lights up like 
Nature's at dawn. There is a thrill of pleasure, a rapture 
of emotion very unlike the calm, placid satisfaction of living 
on in each other's presence day by day, and very far above it. 
The interest of each for each is concentrated into a moment's 
expression. The keener and richer sensations of that moment 
outweigh the pain of parting and the sadness of absence. This 
is "Compensation." And who can doubt that there are 
stronger affections, more kind offices, and more real happiness 
in social life, from that ordering of Providence that takes us 
continually from each other's side only to restore us again, 
than there would be if we were always together ! A man is 
dearer to his household if the day's toils take him much from 
their presence, though they love not to have him go. This is 
Compensation. And we shall find that this experience runs 
its golden threads through every woof of Life. 

Take the Lot of man as appointed by the sentence of 
the Garden : Labor, with the sweat of the brow, upon a 
changed and ungenial soil, fruitful only in thorns and 
thistles! Man's activity, but for the sin, had been ever a 
pleasure and a joy. There had been no weariness nor ach- 
ing in any ardor of pursuit ; no tasking of the muscles till 
the face were moist with nature's overdoing. There had 



COMPENSATION. 185 

been no raggedness in Earth's wide garden to smooth ; no 
growth of thorns to uproot and subdue. There had been 
no tired eyes and aching brains in the darkened fields of 
thought ; no shattered nerves in the pursuits of art, chasing, 
through dim avenues, the fleeting forms of grace and 
beauty ; no " sweat " in gathering, from all harvests, the 
golden-eared sheaves of Wisdom and Plenty. But now, 
from youth to age, it is toil, toil, toil, till the worn laborer 
lies down, exhausted, to his last sleep. Do we ask what 
Compensations can be found, in such a life of constant 
hardship % ■ 

Well, for our Laborer in the desert, there is the pleasure 
of subduing the dreary wastes, and making them like 
Eden's Garden, green, fragrant, and faithful. It is no com- 
mon luxury to the Tiller of the soil, and I take him, only, 
as the representative of all labor, to look out upon his 
cleared fields and prolific orchards, and level meadow-lands, 
and think to himself, " These, through the favor of God, by 
this good right hand I have captured from the wilderness, 
I have dispossessed the thorn and the thistle. I have made 
one blade of grass to spring where there was none, and two 
where there was one. I walk forth where the brambles 
grew, and my flocks and herds crop the rich, abundant 
pastures." This joy is real ! It is great, and it repays the 
Laborer. And so the joy of all acquisition, the pleasure of 
achieving success, compensates the toil it cost. The Hus- 
bandman looks upon his full barns and garnered plenty, 
and thinks no more of the summer heat, and the hardened 
hand, and the streaming brow. The Artist sees, starting 
from the canvas, or the ivory, or the marble, or breathing 
from the chords of Music, the ideal form of beauty and 
12 



186 * COMPENSA TION. 

harmony his fancy followed so long in vain, and he thinks 
no more of the often-baffled pursuit and the weary tension 
of his nerves. The Philosopher, mining, amid Nature's 
deep foundations, to find the hidden links that connect her 
laws and issues, leaps upon the discovery and shouts " Eu- 
reka ! " with an ecstasy cheaply purchased by all the toiling 
years. 

And, again : To compensate the lot of Toil, comes the 
thought that the Hands of Labor are the sceptered and 
bounteous hands that bestow all blessings upon men. I 
mean, that there is no good enjoyed, no pleasure won, no 
comfort entertained, that owes not its being and charm to 
some son of toil. The estates of the rich, the inheritance 
of the heir, the soft couch of idlers, and all the delicacies 
of refined life cost once, somewhere, and from some limbs 
that wrought with weariness, the price of hard work. 
Good, of various kinds, may come to us without our toil- 
ing ; but it was not produced without somebody's toiling. 
This is the law of that primal sentence, that everything 
valuable which man possesses shall be the fruit of the dil- 
igent hand. Why, then, the Laboeer is the only and 
universal benefactor ! He is monarch and dispenser of all 
earthly gifts ! The Artisan's low bench is a throne ! The 
Craftsman's tools are royal batons ! The producers are 
earth's true Nobility ! Our obeisance is worthily to be 
made, not in the halls of gilded ease and lounging indo- 
lence, but before the anvil and the loom, and in the studio, 
and by the hum and jar of machinery. He who produces 
something to help humanity in any of its outward or in- 
ward needs, is heir to a truer honor than all the soft idlers 
of Luxury and Fashion. He may look down, from the 



COMPENSA TION. 1 g f 

height of his real eminence, upon the silken butterflies he 
feeds and clothes. Herein, in the true Dignity of Labor, 
in its undeniable relations to human wants and enjoyments, 
is a " Compensation " so rich and large, that it overpays the 
embrowning of being afield, the dust of the shop, and the 
pale weariness of the chamber of study. 

We may bring up, also, to our thought the healthfulness 
and cheerfulness which, as a general fact, the Laborer 
secures. After toil, his bread is sweeter. He has an 
unfailing relish for his noontide repast. You have no 
need to tempt him with dainties and delicacies. He has no 
coy and sickly appetite to be offended at strong meats. He 
is freer from petty complaints of lassitude and indigestion 
than they who are waited upon by liveried hirelings. If 
his "back ache, his head does not. When the night comes, 
his sleep is like a mantle of Peace from heaven, so deep, 
and quiet, and refreshing is it ; no tossing and wakefulness, 
and wishing for the morning. And then he has the happi- 
ness and cheerfulness of useful activity, " the true bliss of 
mind." The idle man is never a happy man ! His thoughts, 
unemployed in doing, pour out their ceaseless currents in 
wishing. They create, from sheer loss of something to do, 
ideal wants and deficiencies, which, when supplied, bring 
no rest, because they were not real. The way to keep off 
depression, to banish vain cravings, for which there is no- 
where any portion, is to buckle on the harness of exacting 
and beneficent work. We are happiest when busiest, if 
busy in useful labor. So that it has come to pass, that by 
the force of our constitution, and the character of our cir- 
cumstances, that which was uttered originally as a sentence 
for disobedience, has become such a ministry of comfort, 



188 COMPENSA TION. 

that, apart from it, there is no true peace of mind. Who 
can fail to see, in such a Law of Compensation, the outshin- 
ing goodness of the Great Ruler? And what man of us, 
in the deepest weariness of soul or body, can not look up, 
brown or pale with toil, and thank God for the solaces and 
alleviations — nay, shall I not say, the boon of work ? — and 
adore the Mercy that has charmed the sting from the sen- 
tence that fell on our first father Adam in the Garden. 

But it is time we turn to that portion of the sentence that 
fell on Eve and her daughters, and ask, what Compensation 
there is with the specialties of Woman's lot ? 

And, First, with the thought of her seclusion within the 
retired and humble walks of domestic life is associated the 
exercise of her most Queenly power. Mightier is she, in 
the realm of influences that spreads around the fireside, 
than councillors behind the throne. Sowing silently, and 
silently nursing the seeds of Destiny, she shapes the history 
of the age. She sits by the fountains of streams that are 
to surge down the vales of Time, like the Mississippi 
among rivers, and as she directs the little rill, so opens 
and widens the channel along its farthest reaches, even to 
the main Ocean. Talk of the inferiority and lowliness of 
her station — the decree that shut her out from the war and 
strife of outward life, where the strong passions of men 
close for the mastery, crowns and robes her as a Queen 
whom none but herself can depose. 

She is the very Genius and Goddess of Home. Without her 
presence there is scarce such a place or thought as " Home." 
Give her any of the Domestic names, a Wife," "Mother," 
"Daughter," " Sister," and where she receives us from our 
toils, and speaks her kind words and perforins her kind 



COM PENS A TION. 189 

offices, there is the dear ideal of Home to our hearts. Take 
her presence from any of our households, and see if that 
which made the scene a Home to us, is not gone too, and 
our home left desolate ! And by so much as the images 
of Home are sacred and dear to us all, by so. much is her 
peculiar lot dignified and ennobled. Herein is more than 
"Compensation" there is Reward. 

And then, with the specialty of a Mother's Sorrow, is 
there the compensative specialty of the Mother's Honor. 
To lift in her arms a young Immortal, which, though its 
casket be as frail as the cradle that rocked the infant Moses 
on the Nile, shall yet measure the stars, and match the 
height of a spirit's stature, and live as long as God himself, 
to have all human greatness, great kings, great scholars, 
great statesmen, great benefactors, come bending at her 
feet to utter the name of " Mother," to be conscious of all 
this, as she looks upon her infant's face, and clasps it to her 
heart — is she not compensated / is not the bliss more than 
the sorrow ? 

And then, the place she keeps in the heart of children ! 
What son is there that speaks not his "Mother s " name 
with a swelling of heart no time, or distance, or sinning 
can utterly suppress? What would not one do to give 
comfort to her declining years ? What would he not 
dare, to shield her from wrong and harm? Who could 
reach her to wound her, if his breast might stop the weapon ? 
What a Holy name to be spoken almost next to " God's," 
" Our Mother ! " Dearest image that floats out of the 
mist of early recollections ! Tenderest thought that warms 
the heart of the sailor amid the ice of Polar seas ! Unfail- 
ing refuge, amid the sorrows of childhood and the wreck 



190 CO MP ENS A TION. 

of Manhood's full-blown hopes ! Thus to be remembered 
and enshrined beyond the reach of all life's chances and 
changes. Oh, this must be indeed " Compensation " for 
her sentence, in the joy of which she forgets all its sharp- 
ness forever. 

And yet, apart from all this, there is one Honor more put 
upon the woman in her maternity, which eclipses all honor 
beside conferred on the creature. With the allotment that 
seemed to press most heavily upon her, as first in the trans- 
gression, went forth a promise, then indeed dimly under- 
stood, but bright with a glorious meaning, and since fulfilled. 
She alone was to be Parent of the Saviour's humanity, 
Mother of the Son of God. He had no human Father; 
He had a human Mother. He slept beneath her heart ; 
He was rocked in her arms ; He was her own child ! Oh, 
crowning glory of the sex ! Oh, sacred bond between the 
Saviour and Womankind ! The sex that bears lordship on 
earth was to have no share in this lofty distinction. It 
belongs to her alone, to whom the sentence appointed a 
Mother's Sorrow, that, of her, as " Compensation " beyond 
all price of suffering, He should stoop to be born, who 
was " The brightness of the Father's glory, and the express 
image of His person ! " Such honors invest the Woman, in 
her peculiar relation as Mother of the race. Is it not 
more than it was to be mistress of Paradise and hostess of 
Angel-guests ? To be a Woman, is to be the Divinity of 
Home, the Mother of intelligent life, Mother of the Saviour 
Jesus, and, by all these ties, nearest to God and Heaven. 

And we may glance now, as we proceed, at the " Com- 
pensations " found in the walks of Lowly Life, and under 
the cloud of Affliction. You who are poor in this world's 



COMPENSA TION. 191 

goods, need not envy the Rich. Freer are you from cares 
and burdens than he. Equally open * to you are the calm, 
priceless joys of contented and loving hearts. The stars of 
domestic Purity, Faith, and Peace shine as brightly on your 
lowly cottage as on the mansions of wealth. That word 
" Home," with all its endearments, has as sweet a charm for 
your ear and heart, as for the ear and heart of the Master of 
Millions. Safer are you from change and wreck. The 
storms that bow the oak, and rift the tower on the hill- 
top, spare the meadow flowers and the humble lodge that 
look up meekly from the vale below. And forever, it is on 
record, that " God hath chosen the poor of this world, 
rich in Faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath 
promised to them that love Him." 

And if any of you are to-day under the shadow of recent 
Affliction, if there shall be a vacant chair in every circle of 
the Family gathering, some sweet face absent, or some 
venerable form and some pleasant voice silent, brood not 
the sorrow, but search for the cheer of such a dispensation. 
Closer about you gather the hearts that love you, warmer 
upon your cheek comes the breath of sympathy, saying, " Be 
comforted." Clearer to your eye beam the hopes of Heaven 
and all its promises of unparting intimacies and undissolving 
friendships above. "It is good for me" said one that had 
been often and sorely chastened, " good for me that I have 
been afflicted ! " And, oh, if God make us weep that He 
may visit us with consolation, that He may show us what a 
Comforter and Rewarder He can be, when earthly portions 
fail, and earthly ties are riven, most blessed are the tears 
that herald such smiles, brighter such morning after the 
shadows of night. 



192 COMPENSA TION. 

Look up, then, each sad and lonely one. Let us all look to 
the forgotten blessings that bloom, at our side ! More are 
Life's joys than its griefs, and sweeter the joy after the 
bitterness of the grief ! More are the days of sunshine 
than the days of storm, and brighter the sunshine after the 
storm ! More are the hours of health than the hours of 
sickness, and more prized the health when the sickness has 
passed ! More are the ministries of comfort than the 
buffets of misfortune, and dearer the consolation the heavier 
the calamity ! Let this voice, as of a messenger angel, sing 
to us along all the paths of life. 

" Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His goodness, 
and for His wonderful works to the children of men!" 



XIX. 

FOR CHRISTMAS. 

CHRIST GIVING LIGHT. 

"Wherefore he saith, Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and 
Christ shall give thee light." — Eph. v. 14. 

AFTER the Eden gates were shut, the world lay long in 
darkness. Age added itself to age, as hour to hour, in 
the slow chimes of that weary and dreary Night. The works 
of men were deeds of darkness. All that was low and 
groveling, all that was hateful and malign, wrought itself 
into humanity's shameful story. 

It was as though it had been said, " Let it be seen what 
the world will do without God ! " " Let it be shown whither 
the lost race will wander, left to itself ! " Overhead the 
stars glimmered, but how far-ofT and faint ! In them shone 
feebly down the rays of prophecy and promise, but whether 
they were motes or worlds, the dull eyes lifted toward them 
seemed hardly to care to ask. 

. At last the darkness paled into morning twilight. The 
East glowed with the herald flush of coming day. The 
finger of Prophecy pointed no longer over the far levels to 
some distant, unborn future, but downward to some grand 
epoch about to open. Forerunners of the Messiah, the 
anointed re veal er of God and restorer of man, began to 
cross the stage with port and gesture that intimated they 



194: CHRIST GIVING LIGHT. 

were followed close by some illustrious advent. Behind 
them came the long-promised, the long-expected. Christ 
was born ! Heaven made a Jubilee over the event. The 
Sun of Righteousness had risen. The Day had come ! 

" This is the true Light that lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world." They that have been illumined 
by these beams, and walk in their guiding effulgence, are 
called " Children of the Light" * 

But though this risen Sun walks the heavens in a bright- 
ness such as earth never saw before, though every man that 
is born, is born into this light, how many love darkness rather 
than light, and will not come to the light ; and are as those 
who sleep after the morning has broke and the day come up. 
There is a land of light and a land of darkness beneath the 
same illumined sky, — a " Goshen " in the midst of " Egypt." 
Our Scripture assumes, that only those who have received 
Christ are really awake and truly see. Other men walk 
about like those that walk in their sleep. Objects are 
shadowy and indistinct to them. They do not seem to 
realize whither they are going, nor by what they are surround- 
ed. There is no speculation in their eyes. They are open, 
and gaze forward ; but they seem not to see, or to be fastened 
only upon dreamlike fancies. The Christian is awake. He 
has done dreaming. He alone truly sees. What is shadow 
and what is substance is clear to him. Illusions have van- 
ished. Earth, Man, and Time look to him as they are. The 
mysteries of God's ways and works are problems, the solu- 
tion of which, he touches. He walks forth amid an intelligi- 
ble Universe, and beholds the wondrous architecture of God's 
sovereign plan, built up stone by stone, — pillar lifted after 
pillar, — and the domed grandeur of its glorious complete- 



CHRIST GIVING LIGHT. 195 

ness spanning and crowning all. Light upon the reality 
of things shines only in Christ. This is the sentiment I 
have now to illustrate, as the circling months bring us again 
the birth-night of the Son of Mary and of God : the an- 
niversary of the cradle scene in Bethlehem. No true es- 
timate of that Divine System amid which we dwell, and a 
part of which we are, is possible without the inshining of 
the radiance which streams from Christ. 

Take the very First Fact of that system : The Being 
and character of God. Can we know God without Christ ? 
How much can we learn of Him by the light of what we 
call u Natural Religion " % We have glimpses of a Power 
that could pile the thrones of monarch mountains, that 
could shut the seas in their caverned deeps, that could poise 
the white avalanches, that could roll the sable clouds on 
thunder edges, that could stretch over the breadth of space 
the illimitable arch, and hang along the azure ceiling the 
golden-globed lamps of shining worlds ! 

We are astonished at the Wisdom that could carry on its 
thought the vastness of this comprehensive whole, arrange 
details and proportions, perfect the elaborate mechanism of 
each part, and compact the whole into the harmonious Uni- 
verse! We reason that this Power and Wisdom must be 
everywhere present and active; that this creative energy 
must be older than its first out-working, and that on its 
brow there must rest the shadow of a Kingly Crown. We 
say we know this by the light of Nature ; perhaps we can 
prove it by the witness of Nature. But it may be doubted 
whether we could have learned so much without a Revela- 
tion. But we have no Revelation, in any period of being, 
but by Christ ! He alone, since the morning of Time, has 



196 CHRIST GIVING LIGHT. 

"declared" God. Every incarnation, in the older ages, 
through which God communed with men, was the costume 
of the Eternal Word, whose office it is, in all worlds and to 
all creatures, to voice forth the Infinite One. But for these 
supernatural glimpses, while as yet the Babe of Bethlehem 
had never drawn breath, this supreme, invisible, inevitable 
Power might have seemed to us, not a Being with heart, 
and soul, and will, but a blind, deaf, soulless, remorseless 
Despotism, with some principle of organizing skill — an in- 
terior crystallizing vitality that shot forth into forms of 
beauty, and life, and systems of order, but with no more 
distinct, central, conscious feeling and intelligence than a 
dumb, iron-footed Fate ! 

But, taking Him without dispute, revealed in Nature as a 
personal God, Self-existent, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Om- 
nipresent, Supreme ! — is this all we need to know of Him ? 
This is only His nature, not His character. "Omnipotent 
what?" we ask. "Omniscient what?" The answers to 
these questions will make us tremble or hope ! Is He good ? 
Is He benevolent? Is He kind? Put these questions to 
Nature! She lifts a hundred confused voices in reply: 
" He made flowers to bloom, and suns to shine, and birds to 
sing. He clothed the fields in green, and gave the seed its 
germinant life, and nurtures harvests with summer rains, 
and reddens the cheek of autumn fruits, and yellows the 
corn, and sends to wearied toil the grateful alternation of 
Night with Day." Yes. But these are only part of the 
voices. He armed the Thistle with bristling spikes; He 
tapered and sharpened the Thorn ; He gave the Serpent its 
deadly fang. He made the cloud a magazine of thunder- 
bolts. He blows with His northern blast ; He casts forth 



CHRIST GIVING IIGHT. 197 

ice like morsels. He tills the forest with the roar of savage 
throats. He breathes the plague, the pestilence, and the 
mildew. He hurls the tierce tempest on land and sea, on 
mast and tower, and darkens all the wintry air with gloomy 
frowns and slanting sleet. Who is He ? What is this God ? 
These voices jangle on our ear. Nature's testimonies are 
contradictory, showing that the truth concerning God is a 
more comprehensive whole than she can disclose. We can 
not know Him as we need to know Him till we see Him in 
Christ. We can not tell whether we can go to Him ; by 
what name to call Him; how His heart beats toward us. 
One only tongue, the tongue that said, " I am come that ye 
might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly," 
spells out to our trembling souls God's name of " Love," 
and bids us, when we pray, say " Our Father ! " 

Again : From this source only have we light upon the 
meaning and mystery of Life. To-day I am conscious of 
a vital being. I can look back a few years and recall an 
experience that had its birth-hour not long ago. I can see 
my foot-prints lessening from the present to where they 
began at the cradle's side. Here's earth underfoot ; there's 
the sky above ; before me, a blank, receding wall of mist. 
Around me are my fellows drifting on with me into this 
cloud. Within are confused and conflicting forces, change- 
ful moods, embryo powers, germs of capacities and aspira- 
tions, tending I can scarcely say whither. What am I ? 
Whence came I ? For what end was I born ? What can 
be made of me? Wherein do I realize my true destiny, 
the end of my being? Not till Jesus appears and says, 
"Look unto me"; calls to me as to the fishermen at Gen- 
nesaret, " Follow me ! " lifts me up after Him to His cross, 



198 CHRIST GIVING LIGHT. 

and shows me from that elevation my work and my reward, 
do I or can I translate the enigma of Life. 

Again : None but Christ can illumine the darkness that 
hangs over God's Providential Dispensations. The Al- 
mighty One takes in hand some happy family — happy in 
His blessings, though not proficient in the deepest love of 
obedience and trust. Shadows gather over it. The clouds 
roll up dark and threatening. The bolts smite, crashing 
down. There is sorrow in this home. There is want there. 
There is sickness, anxiety, harassing care. There is Death 
and the desolation of Bereavement. Now, until Christ rise 
upon them they will stumble on in the dark. What all this 
means they do not know. It seems to them harsh and 
hard, an unkind discrimination. Why should the storm 
have burst just there and spent its fury upon their heads? 
They are sore at heart, rebellious, insubmissive. It is vain 
to try to vindicate God's ways to them. Goodness, Fatherly 
Goodness, could not express itself in such sharp inflictions! 
But if, in this deep midnight, Christ reveal Himself; 
if they are led thus to seek Him, and to find Him, as a 
Friend, and Brother, and Saviour, they will bless Him with 
streaming eyes for that sable past. It will be radiant with 
outshining Mercy. Never did a black cloud hold so much 
of blessing ! From out the dark, retiring storm they will 
sing, " first in Night's Diadem," 

"Forever and forever more, 
The Star— the Star of Bethlehem." 

So, also, is it with the soul weighed down with the sense of 
Sin. The burden is too heavy to bear. Conscience reproaches ; 
the wrath of God threatens; the guilty past accuses; the 



CHRIST GIVING LIGHT. 199 

gloomy future frowns. "Which way for Peace \ One belief 
is tried, and pacifies the trouble for a while ; then breaks like 
a reed and pierces the hand that leaned upon it. Some other 
system is embraced, some new doctrine pillows the weary 
soul ; there is a momentary, dreamy rest, and then all the 
old solicitudes and fears reawaken ; passion is strong, selfish- 
ness unslain, habit iron-iinked, and there is yet no deliv- 
erance for the captive. Poor, struggling, bewildered spirit, 
vainly expending all its strength, putting forth desperate 
efforts to no purpose but to sink itself deeper ; lifting with 
straining muscle upon itself, it wants a hand above to take 
hold of and cling to. Christ stretches down His hand, warm 
like our own with human flesh and blood. He sets before 
us an open door. True Light, abiding Peace, sure salvation 
come only from Him, and are ours only when He is ours. 
He gives the troubled inquirer light by giving Himself. He 
is Light and Strength and Peace. 

Here is the only clear illumination amid all the Christian's 
doubts and perplexities. The Christian's life is, like all other 
life but God's, progressive. This progress is step by step. 
With each lifted foot some new difficulty presents itself to 
be surmounted, some fresh trial to be endured, some fear to 
be overcome, some doubt to be solved, some duty to be per- 
formed, some uprising appetite that seemed dead or dying 
to be grappled with and bound in chains. Questions start up 
in the soul, " What means this phase of my experience ? " 
" What shall I believe concerning this doctrine ? " " How 
shall I meet this practical hindrance ? " " How can I walk 
constantly with God and attain that ' perfect Love ' which 
* casteth out Fear ' ? " Now, if in any of these perplexities the 
eyes turn anywhere away from Christ, if they go searching 



200 CHRIST GIVING LIGHT. 

amid the obscurities of human reason, looking at the capa- 
bilities of the natural heart, studying human standards, aud 
poring over the issues of human experience in the past ages, 
we shall surely let in upon us only a tide of darkness, be- 
neath which our life shall be in peril of being utterly stifled. 
This is our blessed privilege, to lift and set down every step 
in the assured confidence and comfort of Faith and Hope, 
" Christ shall give thee Light ! " Do you suppose this prom- 
ise could fail — not in general, not as the rule, but once, once ! 
What is the Christian's strait 1 Are his feet ensnared by the 
Adversary ? Does some question of casuistry stumble him ? 
Is he afraid to take God at His word ? Is he feebler of ap- 
prehension than the original Mr. "Feeble-Mind," of the old 
" Pilgrim " story ; more a cripple than his companion, Mr. 
" Ready-to-Halt " ? Why, the more he feels all this, the 
more he is thereby recommended to this gracious help, this 
celestial charity of Christ. 

How long, my brother, have you called yourself a Chris- 
tian f Perhaps you have grown gray since the day you pro- 
fessedly put on Christ. How much have you advanced in 
knowledge and love and joy and peace and consecration since 
that birth-hour of long ago ? Here has almost gone another 
year of this celestial pilgrimage. Are you nearer heaven 
than when its morning chimes broke on your ear? Does the 
Light stream from afar with brightening effulgence on your 
way, on your brow, into your eyes ? Oh, have you tested, 
by an appropriating faith, what Christ could do for you ? 

The spherical completeness of the Christian's life is in 
Christ. You want Him — nothing but Him ! Write down 
this one unalterable determination, as this memorial Sabbath 
recalls the manger scene of Bethlehem and gives out also the 



CHRIST GIVING LIGHT, 201 

farewell of the passing year, " From henceforth I will take 
Jesus Christ as my all in all ! " 

And our Scripture calls, oh how earnestly, to any that 
sleep — sleeping over all the changes that have chronicled 
themselves in your persons and in your character as these 
ripening months have fled ; sleeping while all the uncertain- 
ties of the future stand veiled at your side, while eternity, 
with its changeless issues, takes one stride nearer to you. 
Hear, each of you, this call of all that love your soul and 
desire your immortal welfare, "Awake ! look up ! Through 
all brooding shadows, look to Christ and He ' shall give thee 
light!'" 

And if it be too dazzling, if it seem too daring for you to 

gaze upon the throned Glory, come to the lowly cradle in 

Judea, journey thither with the shepherds from the pastoral 

hills and the Christian pilgrims of all the lands of earth ; 

take the infant Saviour into your arms and into your heart ; 

worship Him, while 

"Angels sing 

" Glory to the new-born King ! " 

And the singing voices, with still increasing tenderness and 
sweetness, shall chant the happy issue : 

" Peace on earth, and mercy mild, 
God and sinners reconciled ! " 

13 



XX. 

FOR THE CLOSE OF THE YEAK. 

DECLINING DAY. 

*'..,. Woe unto us ! for the day goeth away, for the shadows of the 
evening are stretched out." — Jer. vi. 4. 

THE hour of declining day is naturally to most minds an 
hour of pensive though tfuln ess. The sun is sinking. 
The light is fading. A misty veil is spreading over the 
landscape. We cease from work and fall to musing. The 
evening lamp is not yet brought in, and daylight changes 
to twilight. 

"We recall the hopes and the vigor of the morning and con- 
trast them with the present weariness, and perhaps some sense 
of disappointment. Our longing for rest may hint to us 
our frailty. Our thoughts go forward to the sunset hour of 
Life, the time of final disrobing ; and under these mingled 
influences our souls sit silent, if not sad. 

But this natural pensiveness is not the mournful chord 
which tones our Scripture. 

There are not a few who exchange with the parting day 
cheerful salutations. The laborer in the field, w T ho lifted 
there his first stroke of toil with the first beam of morning, 
who has wrought through all the bright hours, pausing briefly 
at high noon for his simple and hurried repast, lifts his eye 



DECLINING DA Y. 203 

to the westering sun with the glad thought that his day's 
work is nearly over. He sees his shadow stretching away 
eastward into giant proportions, not only without a feeling 
of sadness, but with the pleasant assurance of a speedy re- 
lease from his task. Homeward roves his fancy, where the 
cotter's cheer and the cotter's welcome, the smoking table- 
cup and the lighting of familiar faces, await his coming. 
Drive faster down the steep, O charioteer of the Sun ; the 
tired field-hand reckons you an ally and friend of his ! Will- 
ingly would he see your glowing axles disappear behind the 
gates of the West ! 

With some such feeling, too, the Christian pilgrim finds 
himself nearing the close of his earthly journey. His day 
of toil has been full long. He begins to feel the Old 
Man's longing to be at home. He has been detained many 
a year from his Father's house. He misses some from his 
side who have entered in before him. There is rest within 
and dear communion and pleasant festival ; will not his call 
come soon % He is footsore with the length of the way ; is 
he not almost there ? The evening twilight is to him as the 
morning's dawn. The star, that hangs so bright in the 
deepening dusk, is the usher of a more golden day. He 
regrets not his vanished Youth, nor his waning Manhood. 
All his soul is in the gaze with which he looks forward. 
He has not come to the end of his joys ; he is just reaching 
out to their more satisfying fullness. He is not parting 
from his treasures ; he is going, even now, to inherit. If 
there be some things he is loath to leave, yet his gain is to be 
rich and grand. His step may be slower and heavier, but his 
Jieart is lighter continually, and his pulses of Hope quicker 
and stronger. 



204 DECLINING DA V. 

Let the day go away ! Let the shadows stretch out ! 
Swift be the descent of the yet lingering sun ! Sooner 
shall he be at his own Father's door. He is well content to 
lay aside Sin and Grief and Pain, with mortality ; to ex- 
change Earth for Heaven. 

Whose, then, is the plaintive voice that pours itself out 
in these accents of Lamentation, " Woe unto us, for the 
day goeth away, for the shadows of the evening are stretched 
out " ? It is the voice of those who have invested their all 
in this life and feel that this life is slipping away from 
their grasp, 

1. How many there are, all whose schemes of success 
and achievement respect the Present only ! They have not 
a plan that reaches beyond " the life that now is." The 
things which they covet, the enjoyments for which they are 
athirst, the final ends and rewards that stimulate hope and 
toil, lie this side the curtain that separates " Now " from 
" Hereafter." Let them ask themselves at any point of 
their career, let another ask them, what the prize is for 
which with such ardor of pursuit they are striving, and the 
honest answer will name a good that ripens beneath these 
earthly skies. If they have won it, the Present only has 
the gift. It can not dower the Future. These mortal 
years are the years in which they are to attain and enjoy. 
Half of them must be given to the chase perhaps ; but the 
other half shall be years of possession and fruition. Those 
comforted and portioned years are what they strike for ; 
and beyond, for the endless future, they have made no pro- 
vision — they have no abiding investment. 

2. Now, the time will come to such men, when the sen* 
sation of receding life will run, sharply, through soul and 



DECLINING DA Y. 205 

body. They will awake suddenly to the fact, perhaps, or 
the conviction will gather slowly and coldly upon their 
heart that " the best of their days " are behind them. 
u Hitherto " will be the strain of their thought, " hitherto " 
it has been Forenoon with us, our sun mounting yet higher 
on his climbing path ; for awhile he seemed to stand still 
overhead — it was Noon. Now it is Afternoon. The 
■flaming orb is dropping down the western descent. Up to 
the hour of noon the tide of vigor and strength, with 
bright crested waves of toil and enterprise, was on the flood ; 
then it lingered at the full • now, it has turned, it is ebb 
tide. When men with whom this life is all they have 
planned for and labored for, come to feel so and to speak 
so, a shadow falls across their spirits. They may utter no 
lamentation, but, unvoiced, the sad monosyllable that ushers 
in our text is in their hearts. 

3. To such eyes there is no comfort in looking forward. 
It is only he who is hastening on to meet a reconciled 
Father, and receive from His hand a crown of Righteous- 
ness, who can " reach forth to the things that are before.'' 
This reaching forth is the attitude of Faith and Hope. It 
is the most significant posture of the child of God. The 
Future is his. That way lies his Inheritance. He stretches 
out eager arms. When shall he embrace his portion ? But 
to one, all whose coveted riches are in this life, " the things 
before," as the step crosses the Meridian, are not inviting. 
Declining strength, gathering infirmities, whitening locks, 
the stoop that repeats the body's sentence, " Dust thou art, 
and unto dust shalt thou return," the leave-taking, the 
lonely forward drift; these wake no glad pulses in the 
soul. This man's attitude is that of one leaning back re- 



206 DECLINING DA Y. 

gretfully toward the past. For him the sunshine is behind, 
the night is ahead. 

4. He can not well, if he would, shut out the contrasts 
between his earlier and these later days. He recalls his 
youthful aspirations, and all his youthful types of life. 
Once it may have seemed enough for him, if his material 
wants could be supplied. If he could eat well, and sleep 
well ; if his bodily comforts could be cared for ; if he could 
sit down to some inviting relish with every noon, or under 
the half ^shadow of early evening ; if his thirst could be 
slaked with pleasant draughts ; if he could drape himself in 
fitting costume for all the round of the year, and all the 
seasons and varieties of social fellowship ; if he could move 
among his peers, with a personal equipment, upon which 
rested no stigma of inferiority or incompleteness, that 
would once have satisfied and contented him. It was not a 
very lofty scheme of life, it presented no very exalted range 
of enjoyment, but he remembers when it was enough to 
occupy and absorb him. He is past that now. At least 
such gratification is of less price than it was. Its old zest is 
gone. And even if the relish were as keen as ever, the en- 
tertainment will soon be over ; the seasons come and go 
with the swiftness of a weaver's shuttle ; his day is w T aning, 
his shadow lengthening, the good for the body is a good he 
can grasp but a little longer. Woe is him ! The night is 
coming down ! 

Or once, perhaps, his brightest dream was a dream of 
pleasure. He loved to move from scene to scene of mirth 
and gaiety. He coveted to be the life of young companion- 
ship, the cynosure of joyous circles. He would not think 
disturbing thoughts, lest they should sober him and plow 



DECLINING DA Y. 207 

brooding furrows on. his brow. Care and solitude he re- 
jected, and reckoned life as a cloudless summer day, in 
which this butterfly existence was the truest wisdom and the 
supremest bliss. There are those who sport thus an insect 
being, as gay, as decorated, as unconscious of momentous 
realities, as light of mood and motion, as empty of soul 
longings and the disquiet of immortal capacities as the 
Ephemera, whose noon of life is the noon of day, and on 
whose grave the dews weep at nightfall. Once, this man 
was content with such a brilliant round, living a life, not of 
thought, but of sensation, and finding that enough for him. 
But that dream is past. All his appliances and furnishing 
for that type of life have changed with him. Such scenes 
are memories now ; not possibilities any longer. The day 
goeth away. He can not stay one of these young fascina- 
tions, nor the tribute they bore him. 

His past may indeed have been one of more moment and 
breadth. He may have been a man of large plans, of wise 
counsels, and of unflagging energy. He has summoned all 
his faculties to their work. He has been watchful of op- 
portunities. He has communicated impulse and movement 
to Society. But his ends have been near and personal. The 
whole scope of these strong-corded endeavors has been 
bounded by the present. All the agencies he has harnessed, 
have, so far as he has sought their service, wrought in earthly 
fields. He has been, let us say, very successful. He might 
break off from work now, and find his daily charges met 
for the rest of his days. He has built him a mansion to 
shelter his family and to welcome his guests. Around him 
his garden blooms, his fruits ripen, vineyard and harvest 
yield their increase. What does he want more ? Well, this 



208 DECLINING DA Y. 

is all which he once thought he wanted. In the pursuit of 
it, it seemed a most satisfying prize. Even now it gratifies 
his taste and serves his convenience. But Time has not 
stood still with him. It will not stand still with him. It 
will not wait for him to possess and enjoy. There he sits 
under his own vine and fig-tree. The vine flourishes ; the 
fig-tree will endure for half a score of generations. But, 
he changes daily. The clusters may hang low and purple, 
season after season ; but whose hand shall reach up to them ? 
His trembles already, as he stretches it forth. The walk 
shall not long echo to his tread, nor the house long call 
him " master." He sought for competence, for wealth. He 
has them. His arms are full ; but they can not sustain their 
coveted burden. They lose steadiness and strength, day by 
day. He begins to discover that it is so. His possessions 
are not gliding from him, but he is drifting away from 
them. Fibre by fibre, strand after strand, the cable, by 
which he is anchored to the pleasant roadstead where he 
has lain moored for a little while, is parting. A current he 
can not resist is bearing him out to the great and wide Sea. 
I am not speaking, my friends, of the very aged ; but of 
those who know, by many a token, that they are past their 
prime. Silver lines are in their hair. They borrow help 
from art, as they read the daily news. Their children are 
migrating to establishments of their own. They begin to 
cherish, especially, the society of friends, with whom they 
can talk over the histories of other days. The "day," 
their day, is going away. Lengthily, the shadows stream 
and stretch. They find their sun of life, as they look up, 
in the western sky ; and all the voices of change within 



DECLINING DA Y. 209 

them and around them, softly lisping, u Passing on, and 
passing away." 

Such voices are in the ear of some of you, my dear 
friends ! You are not sick, nor pale, nor laid aside from 
private work, nor public care, nor official stations. You are 
as busy as ever ; more trusted it may be, more honored, 
more relied upon ; but you feel and know that the end is 
nearer. You often think of sparing yourselves in some- 
thing. You are prompted to exercise a little more prudence 
than once. You come in at an earlier hour. You write or 
send where once you would have gone in person. Time's 
fingers are touching you. Presently the weight of his hand 
will press you more sensibly, and bow you more heavily. 
Life is passing over you. 

And with some of you, this Life contains your all. 
Your treasures are here. Your friendships are here. Your 
pleasant ministrations are from earthly seasons and earthly 
fruitage. What your busy hands have gathered, are accumu- 
lations laid up here. What your laboring thoughts have 
projected are schemes to be wrought before the sunset. 
What your ardent hopes have pursued are prizes within the 
horizon of the present. Looking forward, and beyond, 
there is no voice of welcome, nor face of welcome, nor 
heritage of unfading good, waiting your coming. 

Ah, how wistfully you will clasp to your heart all you are 
loving and leaving ! The Christian lets go these perishable 
things without a pang ; for his riches are stored across the 
river, beyond the flood. Walk over your pleasant grounds 
again ; sit down with the inventory of your possessions. How 
jnany springs of gratification you have opened for yourself ! 
You are just ready to enjoy. You need, more than ever, 



210 DECLINING DA Y. 

these appliances for ease and rest and cheer. May you not 
yet sit long in the midst of them % Why not ? What is 
that shiver that passes over you? A touch of the palsy 
of age. Look down — your shadow has changed sides. Look 
up — the sun has passed the meridian. " So soon ? " you 
ask, with bated breath. Yes, already. You have furnished 
and provided well in all the veins of material good ; but 
the time shortens fast. If you could only remain as you 
are, you would not ask for youth, or for reveling, or for 
laughter and passion, but alone for quiet and sober enjoy- 
ment. And even as you wish, the golden floods of sunlight 
are paler by one ray the less — one shade the more. Up 
from your heart, riven with this sudden cold conviction, 
whispers the keen anguish, " Woe unto us, for the day goeth 
away, the shadows of evening are stretched out ! " 

I would sadden you to-day, on this last Sabbath of the 
passing year, with these faithful and friendly words. You 
will struggle bravely, perhaps, against the sensation of feel- 
ing old. You will not allow the near midnight, that opens 
and closes the grave of a year, to chill the red currents in your 
veins. You will keep a young heart, and enter into youth- 
ful sympathies, and move and walk and talk with the un- 
abated freshness of your early summer, and say on another 
morning, " Happy New Year ! " with as clear and ringing a 
tone as your lips ever lent the salutation in the joyous past. 
But you can not keep such accents long. If you use the 
words, the lips and the voice will quiver. Whatever happy 
greetings the tongue may speak for dear kindred, it will 
reveal a minor capacity, as it turns in vocal communion with 
the haunting thought, " The day is going — the evening shad- 
ows are gathering." 



DECLINING DAY. 211 

Oh, you want another portion, — a treasure yonder ; some- 
thing to fly to with an eagerness that shall make the transit 
a joy and not a dread ! You want God as your Friend and 
Redeemer — known, reconciled, loved, trusted, communed 
with — waiting to receive you to the everlasting mansions. 

Turn to Him now ! Change your investment. Transfer 
your interest. "Where your treasure is, there will your 
heart be also." Put all your hopes into His hand. Say 
deliberately, solemnly, finally, " I give up the lower good. 
I let go of all I have desired and hoarded. I choose Him as 
my good, and look to Him from henceforth as my wealth 
and my content here and hereafter." He only waits this 
choice of your heart. When your affections move, when 
you take off your hands from the earthly inheritance, 
and stretch them, empty, toward Him, He answers back, 
" I am yours "; and beyond the darkening day and the 
deepening evening shadows, your glad eyes shall see the 
breaking of the eternal morning. 



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